Abstract
Several studies on the development for solar powered uninhabited aerial vehicles(UAVs) are under way as the use of the renewable energy becomes more and more important these days. This paper is for the conceptual design by a discrete and iterative method. An initial design point with 1.5 meter wing span is determined in the global design, which deploys the mass and energy balances among each component of UAV including solar cells and airframe. Then, the iteration for subsystems is carried out with the help of Vortex Lattice Method(VLM) to optimize the aircraft configuration and the solar power system. It is demonstrated in simulations that the optimized design increases the flight time from 62 to 120 minutes when the solar power system is installed. Also, the associated dynamic analysis reveals that the designed small aircraft has the acceptable stability and controllability.
