Deformation measurement system for the fuselage of an unmanned aircraft vehicle

The paper presents a description of the research possibilities of the developed test stand for testing deformations of unmanned aerial vehicle fuselages. The test stand was developed to realize a project of a unique construction of an unmanned aerial vehicle. This design determined the requirements for the test stand. Therefore, part of the work was devoted to the description of the tested object. Due to the specific working conditions of the designed fuselage, the developed test stand allows for simulating the load corresponding to different conditions of the flight, e.g. hovering or progressive flight. Additionally, it is possible to change the forces acting on the fuselage simultaneously for all servos or each of them separately (if necessary). Finally, example results showing the displacement of control points in one of the observed parts of the fuselage are presented. The tests carried out using the developed test stand allowed to verify the maximum deformation of the fuselage. Based on the results obtained it is possible to define necessary modifications to increase the stiffness of the tested object, i.e. to reduce the level of deformations while keeping the mass requirements.