EVALUATION AND QUANTIFICATION OF THE POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES OF BIRD STRIKES IN URBAN AIR MOBILITY

The development of air taxis, driven by advances in electric propulsion, promises new opportunities for Urban Air Mobility. As the aviation industry directs increasingly more attention towards the development of such vehicles, however, new operational challenges and safety concerns are emerging. A major bottleneck for the aviation authorities will be the integration of Urban Air Mobility vehicles into the existing airspace. A successful integration is challenging and needs to consider several aspects. One of these is the hazard of bird strikes. While bird strike poses a risk to any type of aircraft, the risk is expected to be higher in the case of urban air vehicles due to several reasons. Flying at lower altitudes, future air taxis will be more likely to collide with birds. In addition, air taxis are expected to be smaller and have lower certification requirements than conventional aircraft, and will hence be more vulnerable to damaging collisions. In this paper, a detailed impact force analysis is conducted to evaluate and quantify the consequences of collisions between air taxis and birds in terms of impact force, and additionally a Graphical User Interface is developed to visualize the results. By considering both bird-related and aircraft-related parameters in the analysis, a comprehensive evaluation is obtained that provides improved insight into the bird strike problem in the context of Urban Air Mobility. Results are evaluated in the context of bird strike requirements for Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicle proposed by EASA. The conducted analysis implies that the current specifications could be further strengthened by considering additional factors such as bird speed, aircraft material density, angle of impact and depth of penetration.