IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/spochp/978-1-4614-2435-2_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Design of Solar Powered Unmanned Biplanes for HALE Missions

In: Variational Analysis and Aerospace Engineering: Mathematical Challenges for Aerospace Design

Author

Listed:
  • Vittorio Cipolla

    (University of Pisa)

  • Aldo Frediani

    (University of Pisa)

Abstract

Some of the results of a research about the design of solar powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to be used in High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) missions are given. The proposed airframe architecture has a biplane layout, conceived to face the most significant challenge for this kind of aircraft: to fly at high altitude, under wintertime conditions and for a wide range of latitude angles. The Solar Powered Biplane (SPB) concept is presented as well as the related design procedure, which can be used to define UAVs for different purposes and mission conditions, such as loiter altitude, latitude and year’s day. A presentation of the design method is given, providing details about models for Aerodynamics, Flight Mechanics, energy balance evaluation, structural analysis and propulsion system sizing. As a particular result of this research, an SPB configuration capable to meet some of the requirements indicated by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as goals of the HALE flight, is illustrated. Such aircraft, which can operate in each year’s day, at latitudes up to 45° and altitudes up to 18 000 m, is described in details, and a flexibility analysis for different mission conditions is carried out.

Suggested Citation

  • Vittorio Cipolla & Aldo Frediani, 2012. "Design of Solar Powered Unmanned Biplanes for HALE Missions," Springer Optimization and Its Applications, in: Giuseppe Buttazzo & Aldo Frediani (ed.), Variational Analysis and Aerospace Engineering: Mathematical Challenges for Aerospace Design, edition 127, pages 141-177, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:spochp:978-1-4614-2435-2_7
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-2435-2_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:spochp:978-1-4614-2435-2_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.