Design of solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

The Suns energy is as old as our solar system, but both this energy and its invaluable potential have been only discovered in 1839 when a French physicist Alexandre Edmond Becquere studying solar spectrum. He discovered that certain materials, when exposed to light, produced small amounts of electric current. Over a 100 years later solar panels still did not exceed the 2% efficiency while costing 1785 {dollar} per watt. Today however, solar cells efficiencies reach 30 and above and are used in the space industry [13]. Incorporating this solar energy into modern aircraft technologies has been of interest for the last two decades and will be the purpose of this project. This report will first identify the different applications of this design, then move on to the design itself using a methodology aiming at a 24 hour endurance lighter-than-air craft carrying an important payload, collecting the energy during the day for immediate use but as well to store for future use in the batteries through the night. Optimizing both efficiency and feasibility.