Solar Power System for experimental unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); design and fabrication

A Solar Power System for experimental unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is designed and summarized. For the aircraft represented in this paper, solar cells were used to increase the endurance of the aircraft. Obtaining this goal, an electrical circuit was developed to measure the output power of the batteries of the aircraft during the flight. Flight tests showed that in cruise phase flight without battery is achievable. A microcontroller based controller was developed to collect the output power data of power source to be send to the ground station. Since solar cells were decided to be installed on the surface of the wing, an airfoil, upper surface of which is smooth enough for putting solar cells without bending them, should be selected. This airfoil should also be a low-Reynolds-number airfoil. The selection of the airfoil was done by using Design Foil software. Among 150 airfoils which had the two desired conditions, EP178 was selected.