99 K130 corvettes, as well as providing documentation and initial runs of spare parts for the aircraft and integrating its GCS into the K130’s operations centre. It has also designed and established counter-UAS infrastructures, including combinations of ground-based EO/ IR surveillance with hunter UAVs to fire nets for capturing non-compliant or trespassing UAVs. “We fuse static and mobile surveillance systems and uncrewed vehicles via our Elysion C4I software, which provides the core intelligence and a GUI, and hence an operational overview for air defence of sensitive ground assets,” Hildenbrand added. Click Bond showed us two new solutions aimed at making maintenance with its fasteners and other bonding products easier. The first was a sleeve liner component that’s used to protect hole liners or to enable the use of smaller bolts in larger holes by inserting a sleeve to narrow the hole (rather than using a larger bolt, which can be more expensive and have a longer lead time than smaller bolts). The units are manufactured by die-punching sheet metal to long-draw the sleeve shapes. “You just take one of these sleeves, press-fit it over a bolt, and you’ve created your oversized fastener on the fly, or if you have an oversized hole then you drop the sleeve into it to bring it back to nominal size,” said Sean Costella. The company is also developing an AR and VR-based version of its product portfolio, to be used by technicians or systems integrators to choose the right fastener for an airframe, or for design engineers to select the optimal solution during the concept stage of a new vehicle. “By viewing their vehicle or a CAD model of it with an AR or VR headset, the systems integrator can see, based on dimensions and shapes the software recognises, the ideal gasket, fastener or cabling running or mounting solution to put in each place,” Costella added. “The software enables a technician to perform real-time quality checks, helping to ensure they are grabbing the correct component, that they have the right size, that they’re putting it in the right place and at an accurate angle, and similar properties. It can thereby help correct errors by a maintenance technician or help train new ones who haven’t worked on a given UAV before.” Battlefield International debuted a new fuel valve designed for small-tomedium-sized UAVs, called the Climb/ Dive. It has been designed to help equalise the outer and inner pressures of UAVs’ fuel tanks, particularly during climbing and diving manoeuvres. “The reason it can do this is because it’s designed with two independent internal flow passages, and each path can be set to a specified, independent cracking pressure. We can therefore set the outflow of the tank to one cracking pressure, and the inlet flow to another, with the internal flow passage design optimised using software code in Ansys,” said Fadi Mishriky. “When a UAV climbs, the ambient pressure outside the tank becomes lower than the pressure inside, and when you’re consuming fuel, the tank is subjected to lower pressure than ambient. “During descent or diving, the tank’s pressure stays constant but the outside pressure goes up. This valve essentially permits air to flow back and forth between the tank and the outlet, allowing the pressure to equalise and prevent the tank from damage through implosion or explosion.” The Climb/Dive is also plated with a special conductive coating that discharges any static charges on the assembly. The company also displayed its Siphon QD, which has been designed as a dripless quick-disconnect solution for completely draining a fuel tank within a few seconds, and for preventing ingress of air during connecting and disconnecting. DSEI 2023 | Show report Uncrewed Systems Technology | December/January 2024 Through its VorMUAS and AImEG projects ESG has successfully integrated a custom version of UMS Skeldar’s V-200 helicopter UAV for the German Navy’s K130 corvettes Battlefield International’s Climb/Dive pressure valve
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