Modeling and Analysis of Solar Energy Collected by High Altitude Solar UAV’s Surface

Abstract

This paper proposed a numerical model to investigate the characteristics of solar energy collected by the UAV’s surface in different flight conditions. The novel model consists of a solar radiation model and a solar-powered aircraft model. The solar radiation model describes the process of the sunlight (including visible and infrared light) reaching the surface of the panels, and key effective factors are included. The solar-powered aircraft model describes a conventional layout fixed wing aircraft model with solar panels on the upper surface of the wing. The whole model was solved numerically by a computer program developed with C language to calculate the total power that the panels absorbed under different conditions. The visual and numerical results were presented and discussed in details.