Experimental Study on the Aerodynamic Performance of Autonomous Boat with Wind Propulsion and Solar Power

Abstract

The autonomous boat in this research has the capability of using fully renewable energy sources in which its wing sail can provide aerodynamic forces for propulsion while the solar cells provide the power for control and communication systems. Thus, this boat can operate in a long duration, suitable for ocean research and monitoring missions. Similar to an airplane wing, the design of the wing sail is taken from NACA 0018 that can provide good performance in low Reynolds-number. The purpose of this study is to experimentally study the aerodynamic performance of a 1/4th scale wing sail by varying the flap angle in a laboratory set-up. The aerodynamic of wing sail produces lift and drag forces that depend on the wing sail angle of attack. In this study, an encoder is used to measure the angle of attack of wing sail, a potentiometer for measuring the flap angle, and an anemometer for measuring the wind speed. A servo motor is used for controlling the flap angle. The digital data acquisition uses Arduino Uno as the microcontroller which is wired to a PC and coded in MATLAB/Simulink using Arduino package. The experiment results show the wing sail performance, the effect varying flap angles. The total aerodynamic forces were generated in this experiment.