Project Background
The project aims to identify the battery pack thermal and mechanical impact on drones. From thermal management perspective, when the battery is in use to support power for propellers, it will inevitably generate heat due to the chemical reactions. The challenge is to identify the heat dissipation path from the battery pack and see how far it spreads out to other components. At the same time, since the temperature of the drone system is not uniform, it will cause thermal stress, leading to deformation of the propeller arm. When the deformation exceeds certain threshold, it became highly unreliable.
Drone CAD Modeling & Risk Analysis
CAD Modeling
A detailed CAD model is built in Solidworks with fine feature like exact batter pack dimension, electric motor shape, as well as propeller arm complex structure etc. It creates a vivid overview of the entire drone system and from the animation, we can even present the model having different propeller speed to tune its flying motion.
Thermal Analysis
Due to the battery heat dissipation, the entire drone mechanical system will experience a severe temperature gradient. The closer to the battery pack (heat source), the higher temperature it is. The high temperature is a risk for electronics reliability (control panel or motors) and thermal stress and deformation due to the CTE mismatch. Our simulation model helped identify the temperature hot spot region and absolute values, from the thermomechanical simulation, we also identified the thermal stress and deformation to be within spec. Therefore for such battery capacity, thermal challenges are well managed.