Design of a high altitude long endurance flying-wing solar-powered unmanned air vehicle

Abstract

The low-Reynolds number environment of high-altitude §ight places severe demands on the aerodynamic design and stability and control of a high altitude, long endurance (HALE) unmanned air vehicle (UAV). The aerodynamic e©ciency of a §ying-wing con¦guration makes it an attractive design option for such an application and is investigated in the present work. The proposed con¦guration has a high-aspect ratio, swept-wing planform, the wing sweep being necessary to provide an adequate moment arm for outboard longitudinal and lateral control surfaces. A design optimization framework is developed under a MATLAB environment, combining aerodynamic, structural, and stability analysis. Low-order analysis tools are employed to facilitate e©cient computations, which is important when there are multiple optimization loops for the various engineering analyses. In particular, a vortex-lattice method is used to compute the wing planform aerodynamics, coupled to a twodimensional (2D) panel method to derive aerofoil sectional characteristics. Integral boundary-layer methods are coupled to the panel method in order to predict §ow separation boundaries during the design iterations. A quasi-analytical method is adapted for application to §ying-wing con¦gurations to predict the wing weight and a linear ¦nite-beam element approach is used for structural analysis of the wing-box. Stability is a particular concern in the low-density environment of high-altitude §ight for §ying-wing aircraft and so provision of adequate directional stability and control power forms part of the optimization process. At present, a modi¦ed Genetic Algorithm is used in all of the optimization loops. Each of the low-order engineering analysis tools is validated using higher-order methods to provide con¦dence in the use of these computationally-e©cient tools in the present design-optimization framework. This paper includes the results of employing the present optimization tools in the design of a HALE, §ying-wing UAV to indicate that this is a viable design con¦guration option.

Energy Management of Solar-Powered Aircraft-Based High Altitude Platform for Wireless Communications

“…While numerous studies [9][10][11][12] discuss the design and performance of solar-powered aircraft, most focus on aeronautics. A few studies [13,14] consider solar cell energy harvesting in relation to solar-powered aircraft.…”

“…The consumption by the avionics system can be estimated using parameters in [9] where the avionics mass-to-power ratio is given as 6 W/kg and weight of the avionic sub-system is 22 kg. The total avionics power consumption, P Av , for an estimated 22 kg avionic sub-system is approximately equal to 132 W.…”

Preliminary design and technology forecast synthesis for solar-powered high altitude aircraft

“…Noth 5 investigated basic preliminary solar aircraft sizing methodology to achieve continuous flight with a focus on power balance and airframe weight estimation. A similar approach was proposed by Alsahlani, 6 who employed more thorough aerodynamic analysis and made some adjustments to take into account avionics mass. A very detailed design methodology was proposed by Samoilovsky, who used statistical relations for many subsystems for precise weight estimation.…”

Research on Spectrum Needs Prediction Method for HAPS as IMT Base Station

“…However, because of the limitation of aircraft load capacity as well as energy, HAPS has not been commercially available so far. Due to the development of the technology of battery, solar panel [6,7], lightweight materials and autonomous avionics in the last decade [8], HIBS\HAPS is widely considered become more economically feasible in the 6G era. The commercial and research project deployments instance of HAPS systems was introduced in [9], and a summary of past field trials and experimental studies along with open technical issues as well as current application was given in [10] and [11].…”