Due to technological innovations in the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) industry, the potential of these devices has increased remarkably in recent years. This led to an exponential increase in the number of shipments the last few years and this growth is expected to continue the upcoming years (Meola, 2017). The Federal Aviation Administration only permits the use of these devices without authorization in uncontrolled airspace and up to 400 ft. This airspace class is commonly shared with General Aviation aircraft and especially helicopter operators frequently operate below the UAS upper limit of 400 ft. In the United Kingdom alone, proximity incidents between UAS and aircraft have more than doubled from 40 encounters in 2015 to 94 in 2016 (Gilbert, 2017). Due to the increasing number of proximity incidents and the regularity of helicopter operations in the uncontrolled airspace, the question arises how much damage a helicopter can sustain after colliding with a UAS. Since it was not feasible for this research to actually impact a UAS on a helicopter, it was decided to simulate the collision in explicit Finite Element Analysis software. The research objective of this thesis was therefore defined as follows:The objective of this thesis was to predict the helicopter's damage caused by a collision with an Unmanned Aerial System using explicit Finite Element Analysis.

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