Solar-powered Aircraft Design Calculations With Trnsys Program Simulation,

In this article, a research on how various power system components and mission requirements effects the size of a solar powered long endurance aircraft, and the TRNSYS program is used to simulate the performance of solar water heating systems with a hot water storage tank. The aircraft power system consists of photovoltaic cells, a regenerative fuel cell, a engine and propeller. Various characteristics of these components, such as PV cell type, PV cell specific mass, PV cell efficiency, fuel cell efficiency and specific energy, were varied to determine what effect they had on the aircraft size for a given mission. And mission parameters, such as day number in a year, flight altitude and latitude and payload mass and power, were also altered to determine how effect the aircraft size. A analytical method in this article that determine how power system components and mission requirements effects the size of aircraft is developed by getting a expression for total mass in terms of wing area and aspect ratio of aircraft. The results indicate that, for power system, the fuel cell specific energy has a significantest impact on the size of aircraft. Mission requirements also substantially effects the aircraft size. By selecting the day of year and latitude and reducing pay mass, a significant reduction in aircraft size can be getted.The long-term performance of solar hot water systems can be predicted by means of mathematical models. In this article, a simulation for the performance of a solar water heating systems with a hot water storage tank is presented with TRNSYS program.