Failure Mode and Effects Analysis of UAV Power System Based on Generalized Dempster-Shafer Structures

The unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV) power system consists of components that provide flight power for the UAV, which mainly includes three parts: motor, electronic speed controller(ESC), and battery. Since the UAV always operates in the open air, which requires high stability of the power system, the failure mode and effects analysis(FMEA) is particularly significant and it has been widely used to examine potential failures in systems or components. However, the traditional FMEA method has many unreasonable points. In order to better deal with the uncertainty and improve the stability of the UAV power system, we propose a FMEA method which is based on the generalized Dempster-Shafer structures, the failure modes are comprehensively analyzed and the risks are ranked by combining the characteristic information of risk factors with the generalized evidence theory. The new method can not only deal with the uncertainty of risk assessment, but also further improve the reliability of effects analysis. In addition, the FMEA experiment of the UAV power system is carried out in this paper. The experimental results show that the method is effective for practical applications.