Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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FEA based frequency analysis of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

Faraz Ahmad a, Pushpendra Kumar a, Pravin P. Patil a,⇑, Vijay Kumar b
a
Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun 248002, Uttarakhand, India
b
Graphic Era Hill University, Dehradun 248002, Uttarakhand, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A quadcopter is a widely used type of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) due to its simple structure and
Received 24 October 2020 vertical take-off and landing capability. The material and geometrical properties, affect significantly
Received in revised form 12 December 2020 the performance of a quadcopter flight. This paper deals with the material optimization of quadcopter’s
Accepted 16 December 2020
body frame, through Finite Element Analysis (FEA). A 3-D CAD model of quadcopter body frame has been
Available online xxxx
designed analyzed using FEA. The Quadcopter body frame was analyzed for three different materials to
find out the best suited materials namely, copper alloy, aluminium, and carbon fiber reinforced polymer
Keywords:
(CFRP) to find out the best suited material for heavy transportation application. The vibrational frequen-
Quadcopter
FEA
cies are evaluated based on the modal analysis. In addition, the static structural analysis has been per-
Vibration formed to determine the maximum stress and strain developed in the frame under static loading
Static structural condition.
Material optimization Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer-
ence on Technological Advancements in Materials Science and Manufacturing.

1. Introduction cluded that the design was safer than the original design. Kumar
et al. [6] analyzed the quadcopter different parts by static analysis
A Quadcopter is a wildly used Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), to find out the optimum design for weight and power reduction.
which consists of four propellers powered by four separate D.C. Zhang et al. [7] has studied the three-layered sandwiched structure
motors. The rotations of these propellers generate the thrust force of quadcopter to lower the weight and rotator inertia.
and moments enabling its motion in three dimension space [1]. There are not much contributions available in the existing liter-
The research in the area of quadcopter UAV opened the doors of ature about structural analysis of a quadcopter’s body frame. Based
many disciplines to devote research on various topics such as mod- on the above literature review, it is found that the complete study
eling, control, design, etc. [2,11–14]. Many researchers attracted to of a quadcopter is missing which include structural, and vibration
this area due to interesting applications of quadcopter including stability analysis. Therefore, in the present paper, quadcopter body
transport, surveillance, photography, rescue and military opera- frame has been analyzed on the basis of vibration frequency and
tions [3,15]. In the recent years, there has been tremendous structural analysis. The main objective of vibration analysis is to
increase in the manufacturing and marketing of quadcopter UAVs. find out the resonance frequency of failure for the body frame.
In the existing literature on structural analysis of a quadcopter, The quadcopter’s 3D model is designed in Catia and analyzed in
some contributions are described here. Wei et al. [4] has performed Ansys software tools. The present paper divided into the following
the static and modal analysis for base plate to improve the design sections: 1) Introduction, 2) CAD modeling of the quadcopter body
and efficiency using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). First, they frame, 3) Material properties and FEA Analysis, 4) Modal analysis
designed the suitable frame, and then chose the right material of copper, aluminium and CFRP frames, 5) Modal analysis of CFRP
which reduces weight of the quadcopter. Bhatia et al. [5] have pre- frame with fixed propeller arms, 6) Static structural analysis, and
sented the study on the design optimization and the structural 7) Conclusion.
analysis of quadcopter frame through the study of the response
surface methodology. Parameters used for the optimization
2. Cad modeling of quadcopter body frame
included the Von Mises stress and total deformation which con-
The body frame accommodates electronics component and pro-
⇑ Corresponding author. vide casing; in addition, it holds D.C. motors on which propellers
E-mail address: [Link]@[Link] (P.P. Patil). are mounted. In this section, we conceptualize the design on the

[Link]
2214-7853/Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Technological Advancements in Materials Science and
Manufacturing.

Please cite this article as: F. Ahmad, P. Kumar, P.P. Patil et al., FEA based frequency analysis of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Materials Today: Proceed-
ings, [Link]
F. Ahmad, P. Kumar, P.P. Patil et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

basis of weight, geometric and material properties of the body Table 1

frame. The 3D CAD model of the frame has been designed using Material properties.

Catia V5 (modeling software by Dassault Systems) and analyzed Materials Density Young modulus (Pa) Poisson Ratio
using Ansys 16.2 (analysis software by Ansys Inc.). Fig. 1 shows (Kg/m3)
the quadcopter body frame with dimensions taken arbitrary. The Copper Alloy 8300 1.1  1011 0.34
base plate is of 120  120 mm and the full body dimension is of Aluminium Alloy 7850 2  1011 0.30
444  444 mm. This body frame has been design for payload trans- 6061-t6
CFRP 1600 7  1010 0.30
portation application, assuming maximum payload of 20 kg. The
arms cross sections are designed aerodynamically in order to
reduce the drag and to improve the accuracy of roll and pitch
angles. The design is symmetrical about center of gravity which
is at the point of coinciding of arms.

3. Material properties and FEA analysis

The physical structure of Quadcopter is mainly represented by

its body frame which should be rigid and as light as possible. In
the present study, three different types of materials namely, Cop-
per alloy, Aluminium alloy, and Carbon fiber reinforced polymer
(CFRP) are considered, which are commonly used to design the
Quadcopter frame. The frames with each of the three materials
are analyzed and compared to find out the best material suited
for the Quadcopter’s structure. They are prefabricated materials
available for their respective applications and their mechanical
properties are listed in the Table 1. Fig. 2. Mesh model.
3D CAD model of the Quadcopter frame has been imported into
Ansys 16.2 workbench to perform modal analysis for three differ-
ent materials, which is based on Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
FEA is a numerical method used for solving mathematical prob-
lems by discretizing the whole physical domain in small finite
number of elements [8–10]. FEA software (such as Ansys) reduces
the number of prototypes that are to be developed during the
designing and optimizing phase. FEA has applications in engineer-
ing fields like: structural analysis, fluid flow, heat transfer, and
mass transfer [11].

4. Modal analysis of copper, aluminium and CFRP frames

To investigate the vibration behavior of the Quadcopter frame,

modal analysis is performed to identify the first six natural funda-
mental frequencies and their mode shapes. The frequency variation
describes the failure and safe region through color contour scale
under different loading condition. The mesh model with boundary
Fig. 3. Boundary conditions.
conditions is shown in Figs. 2 and 3.
Figs. 2 and 3 shows the meshing of the element and fixed posi-
tion boundary condition (fixed base plate) of quadcopter shown by respectively. First six mode shapes are calculated for all three
blue color. The mode shapes and natural frequencies for copper, materials in which model are tested under different loading with
Aluminum, and CFRP made frames are presented in Figs. 4–6, respect to different mode number. These loading conditions

Fig. 1. Quadcopter body frame.

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F. Ahmad, P. Kumar, P.P. Patil et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Mode 1 (498.62 Hz ) Mode 2 (517.3 Hz)

Mode 3 (598.05 Hz) Mode 4(609.96 Hz)

Mode 5 (653.05 Hz) Mode 6 (664.8 Hz)

Fig. 4. Mode shapes and natural frequencies for the body frame of copper alloy.

include bending, tensile or compressive loads in different mode 5. Modal analysis of cfrp frame with fixed propeller arms
shapes.
The results are plotted in Fig. 7, which shows the comparison of The body frame is again tested by changing the fixed position
natural frequencies under same boundary condition for different boundary condition for optimized material (CFRP) in order to ana-
material properties. Three different types of materials are com- lyze the vibration frequency range. The body frame is fixed through
pared, analyzed and optimized on the basis of the vibration charac- propeller arms (in blue) as shown in Fig. 8.
teristic. Vibration frequencies for mode 1 to 6 vary from 498.6 to Fig. 9 shows the vibration frequency variations in different
664.8 Hz for copper alloy, 650.8 to 800.4 Hz for Aluminum alloy, boundary conditions. The mode shape result shows that the max-
and 854.1 to 1139.4 Hz for CFRP. Since, natural frequencies of CFRP imum deformation takes place at the base plate of the Quadcopter
are higher than Aluminum and copper alloys; hence, the frame in all six modes, which is shown by red color. The results obtained
made with CFRP will have comparatively more strength. from the fixed base plate (Fig. 6) and the fixed propeller arm
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F. Ahmad, P. Kumar, P.P. Patil et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Mode 1(650.83 HZ) Mode 2(663.57 HZ)

Mode 3(698.25 HZ) Mode 4(735.32 HZ)

Mode 5(785.22 HZ) Mode 6(800.46 Hz)

Fig. 5. Mode shapes and natural frequencies for the body frame of aluminium alloy.

(Fig. 9) is tabulated in Table 2 for CFRP material. Refer to Table 2, which helps Quadcopter to move in vertically upward direction.
natural frequencies are given for all six modes with different The propeller required at least 50 N force (each propeller) to lift
boundary conditions i.e., fixed base and fixed arms. For these two 20 kg of payload. Furthermore, Frame is fixed from the base plate
boundary conditions, the Quadcopter’s frame has lower and upper (blue color) and the force of 50 N is applied (red color) on each pro-
frequency range between 854.17 and 1183 and 1139.4–3570.9, peller arms as shown in Fig. 10. In Fig. 11 we can see that the max-
respectively. Therefore, the natural frequency of failure for the imum deformation is 0.1146 mm and shown by red color. Figs. 12
Quadcopter body frame is 854.17 Hz. and 13 show the stress and strain distribution due to applied load-
ing condition. After analysis, the results show that total deforma-
tion, stress and strain are under safe condition and can sustain
6. Static structural analysis the design from failure.

In this section, static structural analysis was performed using Payload (m) = 20 kg
CFRP material. The rotations of propellers generate the thrust force Total thrust force required = mg = 20  9.81 = 196.2 N
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F. Ahmad, P. Kumar, P.P. Patil et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Mode 1 (843.56 Hz) Mode 2 (886.92 Hz)

Mode 3 (1033.5 Hz) Mode 4 (1050.2 Hz)

Mode 5 (1148.6 Hz) Mode 6 (1150.9 Hz)

Fig. 6. Mode shapes and natural frequencies for the body frame of CFRP.

1400
1200
1000
Frequency

800
Copper
600
AL 6061
400
CFRP
200
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Mode No.

Fig. 7. Body frame natural frequency variations. Fig. 8. Fixed boundary condition.

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F. Ahmad, P. Kumar, P.P. Patil et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Mode 1 (1177 Hz) Mode 2 (2051.3 Hz)

Mode 3 (2245.6 Hz) Mode 4 (2836.4 Hz)

Mode 5 (3105.4 Hz) Mode 6 (3145 Hz)

Fig. 9. Six mode shapes and corresponding natural frequency for fixed propeller arms (CFRP material).

Table 2 Thrust force required per propeller = 196.2/4 = 49.05 N

Frequency variation in different boundary conditions for CFRP material.

Mode No. Frequency (Hz)

Fixed base Fixed arm
7. Conclusion

1 843.56 1177
2 886.92 2051.3
In this work, 3-D CAD model of a quadcopter body frame has
3 1033.5 2245.6 been designed and analyzed by comparing three different frame
4 1050.2 2836.4 materials viz., copper alloy, aluminium, and CFRP. From the
5 1148.6 3105.4 obtained results, it is found that CFRP is stronger than other two
6 1150.9 3145.8
materials with higher frequency range. Thus, CFRP material will
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F. Ahmad, P. Kumar, P.P. Patil et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 13. Equivalent elastic strain.

Fig. 10. Boundary condition.

increase the lastingness of the body frame, under the dynamic

loading condition. Furthermore, static structural analysis is per-
formed to determine the maximum deformation, stress and strain
in the frame for a given payload.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Faraz Ahmad: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software.

Pushpendra Kumar: Data curation, Writing - original draft. Pravin
P. Patil: Supervision. Vijay Kumar: Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-

cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.

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