Flying Drones in Complex Environments: Inspecting Grain Silos

Companies are looking to automate the inspection workflows of their larger infrastructure assets. For efficient and complete solutions they have to involve automated drone flights.

Manned inspections of industrial assets like buildings, silos, hangars, etc. are expensive, dangerous, and in most cases incomplete. Due to the asset’s complexity, it is seldom possible to achieve all required visual vantage points for a complete inspection. The introduction of drones into the inspection workflows at the industrial site has the potential to solve these problems, granted that the process can be streamlined and automated. 

A complex use case

In a recent project, Drone Inspections WA was contracted to provide a structural survey of the roofs of grain silos in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, to determine where structural deformations have occurred. These structures have conical roofs held up by wooden beams that are prone to sag and expand as the heat and gases inside the silo expand or contract. The required output was a CAD file that would be overlaid with the structural drawings to determine if deformations had occurred.

Chris of Drone Inspection WA recognizes the value of automated flights:

“We were required to provide a resolution of a minimum of 2 cm/pixel. Only an automated flight with Drone Harmony could achieve this. The sites were challenging to set an automated flight path for, as the roofs were conical, and had many obstacles to navigate around.”

We were required to provide a resolution of a minimum of 2cm/pixel. Only an automated flight with Drone Harmony could achieve this.

Drone Harmony features numerous autonomous missions suited for inspecting complex vertical structures, such as buildings, facades and towers.

Are you looking for an efficient and suitable industry inspection solution? Visit droneharmony.com or feel free to contact us at any time.

PDF of this use case.