Modification of Aircraft to Serve as Humanitarian Mobile Medical Facilities: A Systems Engineering Approach
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Date
2010-06
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
What does it take to change the world? In a world strife with poverty, disease, disaster, and death, this thesis attempts to shine a light of hope on the seemingly hopeless by engaging these problems directly, in an unconventional way. The primary objective of this effort is to detail the engineering modification of existing aircraft to serve as mobile medical facilities in humanitarian operations, in order to serve highly impoverished and remote regions of the world lacking reliable infrastructures (notably runways) and healthcare systems, especially in times of crisis and disaster. It is believed that an aircraft equipped with onboard medical facilities could be further modified to exhibit short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability as well as effectiveness in landing on rugged terrain. A variety of existing, proven technologies will be studied and integrated with a suitable existing aircraft, the C-130 Hercules transport, in order to determine their effectiveness in enhancing mission performance capabilities, while avoiding extensive alterations to the exterior body and structure of the airframes. These modifications mainly include wing leading edge extensions, double-slotted flaps, spoilers, and auxiliary small turbofan engines, which are projected to increase aerodynamic lifting capability (CL,max) by up to 95% and increase takeoff thrust by 40%, leading to a reduction of dirt field takeoff ground distance from 3500 ft to 1500 ft – 2200 ft or less and a reduction of landing ground distance from 1700 ft to 1000 ft or less. Deeper aerodynamics analysis has served to verify the above claim, and detailed fluid-structural analysis (to give further confidence in the results) is currently underway. Furthermore, modularization of the onboard hospital itself is being explored, such that the aircraft and the hospital can be decoupled for mission flexibility, in order to both make use of the same aircraft as a rescue/transportation platform and to use the offloaded Mobile Hospital as a field clinic. Thus, this systematic approach to aerospace design engineering will strive to assure an innovative solution that is viable in the present day, making it implementable in a very short amount of time. Furthermore, the solution will be developed in such a manner that systems integration challenges, system complexity, and cost/maintenance required are minimized, so that humanitarian operations are expanded without overburdening the organizations that fund and support them. Hence, this flying hospital should lead to a wider outreach and subsequent servicing of a much larger and – as of yet – difficult to reach population.
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Keywords
Medicine, Aerospace, Humanitarian, Poverty, Aid, Hospital, Healthcare, Aircraft