Optimal airfoil design and wing analysis for solar-powered high-altitude platform station

Abstract

The ability of flying continuously over prolonged periods of time has become target of numerous research studies performed in recent years in both the fields of civil aviation and unmanned drones. High-altitude platform stations are aircrafts that can operate for an extended period of time at altitudes 17 km above sea level and higher. The aim of this paper is to design and optimize a wing for such platforms and computationally investigate its aerodynamic performance. For that purpose, two-objective genetic algorithm, class shape transformation and panel method were combined and used to define different airfoils with the highest lift-to-drag ratio and maximal lift coefficient. Once the most suitable airfoil was chosen, polyhedral half-wing was modeled and its aerodynamic performances were estimated using the computational fluid dynamics approach. Flow simulations of transitional flow at various angles-of-attack were realized in ANSYS FLUENT and various quantitative and qualitative results are presented, such as aerodynamic coefficient curves and flow visualizations. In the end, daily mission of the aircraft is simulated and its energy requirement is estimated. In order to be able to cruise above Serbia in July, an aircraft weighing 150 kg must accumulate 17 kWh of solar energy per day.