Design and Development of Lightweight-High Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Offshore Search and Rescue Operation

Workers on offshore oils rigs are constantly risking their lives due to the location of these rigs in the middle of the ocean. One of the risks to these workers are falling from the rigs and drowning. Therefore, SAR (Search and Rescue) quadcopter carrying a life jacket was designed to reach the location of this worker at a much faster rate and in a more efficient manner than the conventional rescue operation. The main objectives of the project are; to design and develop a small rotary drone that is able to deliver floatation device to a drowning offshore worker and return to the oil rig under variety of weather conditions; to evaluate drone structural integrity and flight endurance, and; to simulate basic aerodynamic forces that act on the structure. The frame of the drone has gone through many iterations in order to end up with the most efficient design possible. Stress analysis was conducted as well as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was performed to simulate dynamics analysis.