A solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle with 12ft wingspan has been designed and built. The project is ideally suited for educating undergraduate aerospace and electrical engineering students. Important design drivers are the use of low-cost commercial off-the-shelf components and manufacturing techniques that are appropriate for undergraduate students. The design objective was to obtain a light-weight but structurally sound aircraft that can cruise solely on solar power during day time and that can carry a 51b payload. A detailed aerodynamic analysis provided an optimum cruise velocity and static margin. Computer aided design drawings of the plane were generated and a battery-powered half-scale model was built to evaluate the stability and control characteristics. The propulsion system for both full-size and half-scale was chosen with the on-line resource propCalc. Based on measurements for a table top model, the available solar-electrical power was estimated and a circuit for charging the battery and powering the motor was designed.
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