• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.523-535
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• 2012

Solar powered aircraft are becoming more and more interesting for future long endurance missions at hight altitudes, because they could provide surveillance, earth monitoring, telecommunications, etc. without any atmospheric pollution and hopefully in the near future with competitive costs compared with satellites. However, traditional aircraft sizing methods currently employed in the conceptual design phase are not immediately applicable to solar powered aircraft. Hence, energy balance and constraint analyses were performed to determine how various power system components effect the sizing of a solar powered long endurance aircraft. The primary power system components considered in this study were photovoltaic (PV) modules for power generation and regenerative fuel cells for energy storage. To verify current research results, these new sizing methods were applied to HALE aircraft and results were presented.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.212-217
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• 2014

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) are useful devices to assess new features that may be utilized in a full size aircraft to enhance performance or to increase endurance. In this article, sources for energy saving in the micro air vehicles are initially addressed. Then, by specifying the important parameters on energy consumption of an aircraft, a feasibility study is conducted to assess the benefit of using solar cells to increase flight endurance. Next, a new solar cell has been designed and optimized for MAVs. This cell consists of a multiple quantum wells for which the quantum factor and the absorption coefficient are calculated by solving the Shrodinger equation using MATLAB software. Then, the manner and influence of MAVs parameters using the solar cells are examined to suggest optimal planform for different purposes. In order to increase flight endurance, it is noted that by using appropriate planform and the optimized solar cells, flight endurance can be increased by more than 30 percent.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.7
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• pp.590-600
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• 2012

In this research, generalized sizing methods were studied that can be applied to an aircraft which uses solar cell or fuel cell as energy sources. To consider multiple propulsion systems and energy resources, multiple power paths were modeled and the weight of consumable and non-consumable energy was reflected in the weight change calculation for each mission segments. In the constraint analysis, power to weight ratio was selected instead of thrust to weight ratio and used in the sizing process of balancing power and energy.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.59-66
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• 2011

Recently, an UAV using green energy for propulsion has been developed due to exhaustion of fossil fuel. This aircraft runs on electric motors rather than internal combustion engines, with electricity coming from fuel cells, solar cells, ultracapacitors, and/or batteries. Especially solar cells are installed in HALE UAV and flight tests are performed in the stratosphere. Although the solar powered UAV has the advantage of zero emission, its energy conversion efficiency is low and operation time is limited. Therefore, the solar powered UAV has been designed to operate with the secondary battery obtaining flexibility of energy management. In this study, we suggest the new operational concept of the solar powered UAV using directed-energy rayed from the surface of earth to UAV. An UAV is able to secure additional power through attaching solar cell to the lower surface of elevator. As a result, the additional energy supplied by directed-energy can improve the energy management and operational flexibility of the solar powered UAV.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.544-547
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• 2011

This paper describes on hardware simulation of passive power control of propulsion system for electric propulsion aircraft of KARI. The propulsion system uses hybrid power system that is composed of solar cell, fuel cell and battery. The fuel cell is replaces by simulator due to its difficulty in handling while the other components are the same as that will be used on board. As the result, reliable power supply for propulsion is confirmed and each power source is well operated showing its characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2011

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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.468-477
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• 2014

In this research, how a solar powered HALE (high altitude long endurance) UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) can climb and reach mission altitude, 18km, starting from the ground using only solar energy. A glider type aircraft was assumed as a baseline configuration which has wing area of $35.98m^2$ and aspect ratio of 25. Configuration parameters, lift and drag coefficients were calculated using OpenVSP and XFLR5 that are NASA open source programs, and climb flights were predicted through energy balance between available energy from solar power and energy necessary for a climb flight. Minimum time climb flight was obtained by minimizing flight velocities at each altitude and total time and total energy consumption to reach the mission altitude were predicted for different take off time. Also, aircraft moving distances due to westerly wind and flight speed were calculated.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.32-38
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• 2014

Sufficient energy charging during a day is essential for a solar-powered long-endurance aircraft. Variations of flight path that is superior to a basic circle path are sought in this study for more efficient charging. Flight path associated with roll and pitch attitudes are investigated. It seems that the pitch angle can play more important role than the roll angle for the solar charging efficiency. Thus, more energy charging is observed when the entire flight path is tilted toward the direction of the sun.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.07a
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• pp.325_326
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• 2009

For the sake of the safety of aircraft, aviation obstacle lights should be installed on the towers of transmission line in accordance with the Aviation Act. At present, the used solar-cell aviation obstacle lights are composed of LED lamp and a regulator, batteries, solar-cells which are divided into four parts. And, the divided four parts are connected by cable. Also, aviation obstacle lights are consisted of 150 LED lamps. therefore, the scale of sollar-cells, batteries and the power consumption of aviation obstacle light is big. For that reason, this paper would introduce the development of the solar-cell type single body LED aviation obstacle using the high brightness LED in order to make aviation obstacle more lightened and small-sized.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.133-140
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• 2018

Recently, environmentally friendly aviation propulsion systems have received a lot of attention. Therefore, many studies have been conducted on the development of UAVs and propulsion systems that can perform missions while relying on a combination of various power sources. In this paper, we show the design results of a hybrid propulsion system based on solar-power generation. It integrates a single system to test reliability and performance. Finally, a verification test is conducted on the aircraft to confirm the function and normal operation of the system before a flight test.