Abstract
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) can face nontrivial overheating challenges in environments with high ambient temperatures and solar insolation levels. Heat generated by propulsion, battery, and computer systems can be difficult to manage in such conditions. This paper presents results from a series of experiments designed to characterize heating and cooling profiles for an electric-powered small UAS. A single fuselage houses the electric propulsion system, an NVIDIA Jetson TK1 with multiple central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) along with a lithium-polymer battery pack powering the computer, propulsion, actuation, and communication systems. Temperature sensors were placed at multiple stations inside the fuselage, and temperature data was collected over a variety of motor thrust, CPU/GPU load, and ambient temperature conditions. Wind tunnel tests were performed to characterize heating and cooling as a function of free stream airspeed; stationary outdoor tests were conducted to examine the impact of direct sunlight on fuselage heating. Heating and cooling curves were fit to acquired data. These experimentally-derived thermal models can be used in future cyber-physical UAS models to enable tradeoffs over computational, power, and propulsion system use due to expected thermal load during mission planning and real-time flight.
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