Contribution To R.A.M.S estimation in early design phases of unmanned aerial vehicles - UAVs

The aim of this work is to establish a methodology for assessments of Reliability, Safety and Maintenance features for future UAVs, to be integrated in complex Monitoring Systems, like SMAT System. This paper highlights the high level of complexity connected to this type of assessment. In particular, one of the principal sources of difficulties is the need of estimating RAMS characteristics for a product that is still not known in detailed, like it is usual for airplane in Conceptual Design phase. A further problem concerns the need of dealing with UAVs, i.e. aircraft with strong peculiarities and, due to the very recent development, poor historical data. By the way, referring to a methodology that has been previously developed for manned aircraft (by the research group the authors belong to), a new estimation process applicable to unmanned airplanes is here proposed. At the end, a comparison between the obtained results and few historical data is reported.