Design and Analysis of Long Endurance Solar Powered UAV

UAVs are becoming the most useful flying vehicles with multiple applications. The design and specifications of the proposed SUAV are inspired by the PHASA-35 and Zephyr-7 projects. The two projects reached an altitude of more than 20,000 m and weighed 150 and 53 kg respectively. It was shown that such an aircraft would be economical and capable of replacing conventional machines with reduced fuel, emissions, and maintenance burden. The purpose of this research was to design an analyze the solar powered high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The designed aircraft can fly with multiple civilian and military applications including communication, weather monitoring, surveillance of land and coastal border and fire detection. Available commercial software ANSYS and Xfoil are used for modelling and aerodynamics analysis of SUAV. In the design, energy is extracted from solar arrays in the morning for normal operation and some of it is stored for night operations. The acquired results are compared with published studies on similar designs.