A High-Fidelity, Low-Order Propulsion Power Model for Fixed-Wing Electric Unmanned Aircraft

Or D. Dantsker, Mirco Theile, M. Caccamo
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引用次数: 22

Abstract

In recent years, we have seen an uptrend in the popularity of UAVs driven by the desire to apply these aircraft to areas such as precision farming, infrastructure and environment monitoring, surveillance, surveying and mapping, search and rescue missions, weather forecasting, and more. These aircraft are more often being fully powered by electric power sources and a major technical hurdle is that of drastically reducing overall power consumption so they can be powered by solar arrays, and for long periods of time. To do so, the power requirement of an aircraft and the conversion efficiency of its propulsion system, from electrical energy to thrust, must be parametrized so that it can be improved. This paper describes a high-fidelity, low-order power model for electric, fixed-wing unmanned aircraft using flight path information. The motivation behind this work is the development of computationally-intensive, long-endurance solar-powered unmanned aircraft, the UIUC Solar Flyer, which will have continuous daylight ability to acquire and process high resolution visible and infrared imagery. Therefore, having an accurate power model will aid in providing the ability to predict power usage for future mission flight segments, which will be vital for energy-conscious path planning. Compared to works in the existing literature, the model presented follows a holistic approach for fixed-wing electric UAV power modeling that encompasses both aircraft aerodynamics and propulsion models under realistic assumptions. The model developed is able to very accurately estimate the power consumption of an electric UAV based on flight path state, without needing precise aerodynamic measurements, therefore doing so with minimal computation power. The propulsion power model was evaluated by means of flight testing as well as simulation and showed errors ranging from negligible to approximately 5%.
固定翼电动无人机高保真低阶推进力模型
近年来,由于希望将这些飞机应用于精准农业,基础设施和环境监测,监视,测绘,搜索和救援任务,天气预报等领域,我们看到了无人机普及的上升趋势。这些飞机通常完全由电力供电,一个主要的技术障碍是大幅降低总体功耗,以便它们可以长时间使用太阳能电池阵列供电。要做到这一点,必须对飞机的动力需求及其推进系统从电能到推力的转换效率进行参数化,以便进行改进。介绍了一种基于航迹信息的电动固定翼无人机高保真低阶功率模型。这项工作背后的动机是开发计算密集型,长航时太阳能无人驾驶飞机,UIUC太阳能飞行器,它将具有连续的日光能力,以获取和处理高分辨率的可见光和红外图像。因此,拥有一个准确的功率模型将有助于提供预测未来任务飞行段的功率使用情况的能力,这对于节能路径规划至关重要。与现有文献中的工作相比,所提出的模型遵循固定翼电动无人机动力建模的整体方法,包括现实假设下的飞机空气动力学和推进模型。所开发的模型能够非常准确地估计基于飞行路径状态的电动无人机的功耗,不需要精确的空气动力学测量,因此以最小的计算能力这样做。通过飞行试验和仿真对推进功率模型进行了评估,结果显示误差从可忽略到约5%不等。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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