Design and analysis of an inflatable recovery platform for shipborne UAV

Abstract

Abstract It is difficult to recover drones for small ships (such as destroyers). Therefore, it is necessary to design a new carrier-borne UAV recovery platform, achieving the purpose of rapid recovery of offshore UAV. This paper presents a fast unfolding and folding inflatable structure for small ship UAV offshore recovery. This paper analyze some static response of the UAV recovery platform. Firstly, parking positions of UAV on the runway surface is a factor. Secondly, runway surface materials is also a factor. Thirdly, airbag’s internal pressure also affects static response of the platform. It is find that static responses such as deformation and stress more sensitive to the runway surface material and the position of UAV, and the transverse deformation is sensitive to the runway surface material, but not to the internal pressure of the airbag.