PV System Design and Flight Efficiency Considerations for Fixed-Wing Radio-Controlled Aircraft—A Case Study

Bojan Kranjec, Sasa Sladic, Wojciech Giernacki and Neven Bulic
Additional contact information
Bojan Kranjec: Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Vukovarska 58, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Sasa Sladic: Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Vukovarska 58, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Wojciech Giernacki: Institute of Control, Robotics and Information Engineering, University of Technology, Piotrowo 3a, 60-965 Poznań, Poland
Neven Bulic: Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Vukovarska 58, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-12

Abstract: The list of photovoltaic (PV) applications grows longer every day with high consideration for system efficiency. For instance, in spite of many recent PV aircraft designs, aircraft propulsion was mainly reserved for nonelectric motors. Lately, the Solar Impulse flight across the world shows the possibilities of larger PV powered electric aircraft. In order to obtain this goal efficiency of flight, PV conversion, power converters and electric drives have to be maximized. These demands led to a 63.4 m wingspan. The purpose of this paper is to present that PV power could be used for improving the performance of fixed-wing radio-controlled aircrafts with smaller wingspans (1 m). In order to improve the performance of battery powered electric unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), a model without PV cells (commercial Li-ion battery powered UAV) was compared with UAV powered both from battery and PV modules. This work shows details about Boost DC/DC converter and PV system design for small size fixed-wing electric UAVs, investigating the possibility of the application of PV powered drones, as well. Theoretical findings involving efficiency improvements have been confirmed by measurements combining the improvements in electrical engineering, microcontroller application and aerodynamics.

Keywords: transport; UAV; energy; photovoltaic (PV); power converter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/10/2648/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/10/2648/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:11:y:2018:i:10:p:2648-:d:173650

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().