The Development of a Small Solar Powered Electric Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems

Abstract:

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has an enormous role to both military and civilian missions. However, a short range endurance of current UAV system affects the life expediency, data monitoring, and output performance of a mission. This is due to having UAVs that are dependent on batteries. The weight of the battery and low temperature environment has undoubtedly been the main cause for the poor UAV performance. In spite of its prolific improvement in UAV system, the endurance permissible is between 45 minutes to 4 hours. Therefore, this situation makes battery no longer attractive to be widely used for UAV. Lately attention has been focused on the use of solar cell in UAV in replacement to battery as its power system. Nevertheless, current solar cells characteristic and efficiency is insufficient to sustain a long endurance flight. This is due to failure to identify an appropriate selection of material and parts in designing the UAVs solar augmented power module system. Therefore, comprehensive work on the solar power system and its integration is essential for an excellent UAV performance. Thus, a research work has been done to studies on the design of a solar and battery power system for an electric UAV. Subsequently, a small solar powered electric UAV has been developed. As a result, the UAVs specification, layout and systems description are presented extensively in this paper. This UAV has enabled an understanding how the solar augmented system has enhanced the endurance performance the electric UAV to almost 24 hours. Moreover, this UAV has 5 successfully flight up till date with useful data that predicted this UAV aerodynamic characteristic.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volumes 465-466)
• Pages: 345-351
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.465-466.345
• Online since: December 2013
• Authors: Parvathy Rajendran*, Howard Smith
• Keywords: Electric Propulsion, Flexible Solar Cell, Lithium-Polymer Battery, UAV, Unmanned Aircraft Systems

References

[1] H. M. G. Vidales, Design, Construction and Test of the Propulsion System of a Solar UAV. (2013).

[2] M. R. Bhatt, Solar Power Unmanned Aerial Vehicle: High Altitude Long Endurance Applications (HALE-SPUAV). (2012).

[3] S. Cowley, Solar Powered UAV, NASA Tech Briefs 2013. ( 2013).

[4] P. Rajendran and H. Smith, Review of the Battery & Solar Power System Development of Small Solar Powered Electric Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. (2013).

DOI: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.1125.641

[5] H. Smith and P. Rajendran, Review of the Elementary Aspect of Small Solar Powered Electric Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. (2013).

[6] Information on American Wire Gauge Chart, available at http: /en. wikipedia. org/wiki/American_wire_gauge.

[7] Information on Technical Resources for Design Engineers, Instrument Engineering Inc. available at http: /www. powerstream. com/tech. html.