The ability of flying continuously over prolonged periods of time has become
target of numerous research studies performed in recent years in both the
fields of civil aviation and unmanned drones. High-altitude platform
stations are aircrafts that can operate for an extended period of time at
altitudes 17 km above sea level and higher. The aim of this paper is to
design and optimize a wing for such platforms and computationally
investigate its aerodynamic performance. For that purpose, two-objective
genetic algorithm, class shape transformation and panel method were combined
and used to define different airfoils with the highest lift-to-drag ratio
and maximal lift coefficient. Once the most suitable airfoil was chosen,
polyhedral half-wing was modeled and its aerodynamic performances were
estimated using the computational fluid dynamics approach. Flow simulations
of transitional flow at various angles-of-attack were realized in ANSYS
FLUENT and various quantitative and qualitative results are presented, such
as aerodynamic coefficient curves and flow visualizations. In the end, daily
mission of the aircraft is simulated and its energy requirement is
estimated. In order to be able to cruise above Serbia in July, an aircraft
weighing 150 kg must accumulate 17 kWh of solar energy per day.