Abstract
There have been large developments in the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) industry over the last decade. Although UAV development was mainly for military related use in the beginning and despite there being fear surrounding the release of this technology to the open market for quite a long time, nowadays, there are a variety of applications where UAVs are used extensively, such as in agriculture, infrastructure inspection and monitoring, mobile retranslation relays for communications, etc. One of the weaknesses of electrically propelled UAVs is flight autonomy; there is often a difficult trade-of between the weight of the payload, batteries, and surface to be surveyed that is necessary to determine. There have been many attempts to use photovoltaic cells to increase the flight time for UAVs; however, a reliable solution has not yet been developed. The present paper presents improvements that have been conducted to extend the autonomy of electrically derived UAVs: instead of gluing photovoltaic cells on the wings, the new approach embeds the solar cells into the wing structure as well as develops a new wing that is significantly lighter to compensate for the weight added by the photovoltaic cells. It was demonstrated that by using this approach, a 33% increase in the flight time can be achieved with only one modified wing in a prototype vehicle.
Highlights
Due to the frequency at which unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) manoeuvre, the solar irradiation is not dispersed on the cell surface, leading to a less efficient conversion. Another disrupting factor was that the weight of the solar cell matrix, the material used to connect them, and the resin used to glue them on the wings increased significantly the weight of the UAV, decreasing the weight of the usable payloads
In the first step of the rolling process, the photovoltaic cells are incorporated in the epoxy resin, eliminating the excess resin, in order to obtain a structure with a minimum thickness and a minimum weight
The new fabricated wing has the required mechanical flying capabilities since it passed the tests, and the photovoltaic cells embedded in its structure were not damaged due to mechanical factors
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Due to the frequency at which UAVs manoeuvre, the solar irradiation is not dispersed on the cell surface, leading to a less efficient conversion Another disrupting factor was that the weight of the solar cell matrix, the material used to connect them, and the resin used to glue them on the wings increased significantly the weight of the UAV, decreasing the weight of the usable payloads. To develop an ultra-light UAV wing; To develop photovoltaic cells that are suitable to be embedded into the structure of the wing. These two efforts are interconnected by specific requirements such as the mechanoclimatic loads that are specific for fixed wings. A short video is included in the Supporting Materials that documents the flight of the prototype
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