Aerodynamic investigations and power requirement analysis of solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle for long endurance

Abstract

In the modern aviation sector, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) play newlinemany crucial roles in supporting a variety of applications such as remote newlinesensing, navigation, wildlife conservation, surveying, agriculture, food newlinedelivery, air ambulance, etc. Nevertheless, the utilization of Unmanned Aerial newlineVehicles (UAVs) for longer flight time in the mission profile is one of the newlinechallenging tasks experienced from the past research. To cope with demands newlinefor more endurance, solar energy-based Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) newlineare being developed in the aviation market. However, the endurance newlinecapabilities of solar-powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are affected newlineowing to their deficiencies in aerodynamics parameters, and the energy newlineconsumption rate of propulsive components and airframes. In addition, the newlinedegradation of aerodynamic parameters resulting from the improper newlineintegration strategies of solar cells severely impacts the efficiency of solar newlinepowered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Hence this current research newlinemotivated to investigate the aerodynamic parametric analysis along with the newlinepower requirement estimation of solar-powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles newline(UAVs). newlineThe present study aimed to enhance the performance of aerodynamic newlineparameters which means to improve the endurance factor and power newlinerequirement characteristics. This research challenges the design and newlineaerodynamics of solar-powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) wings newlinebased on the integration strategy of arranging solar cells over the upper newlinesurface area. The current investigation proceeds with aerodynamic newlineperformance analysis and power requirement studies based on the wing newlinesection introduced with high-lift low Reynolds number airfoil to support the newlineoperation of solar-powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV). newline