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Characterisation of a UAV Electric Architecture and Power Demand Profile for the Purposes of Improving Overall System Efficiency and Performance
Technical Paper
2011-01-2682
ISSN: 0148-7191, e-ISSN: 2688-3627
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English
Abstract
This paper presents a summary of several projects investigating
the power generation and demand profiles of UAV power systems for
the purposes of increasing overall system effectiveness.
With an increasing presence of advanced energy generation and
storage devices in UAV power architectures such as fuel cells,
photovoltaics, super capacitors, etc., and an increasing potential
to dynamically control a UAV system's load profiles, mission
effectiveness can be substantially improved via intelligent power
management techniques as well as through traditional efficiency
improvements. Load scheduling, power smoothing and dynamic mission
planning can all introduce energy saving and optimization
opportunities, particularly when the characteristics of system
loads can be matched with the energy storage and generation of the
system.
Traditionally, the biggest drain on an electric UAV system is
the main propulsion system, however initial investigations into a
typical mini UAV platform (≺20 kg) have indicated that a complex
communication architecture and payload can present an energy drain
of a comparable magnitude. In order to characterize the full impact
of the constantly fluctuating system loads, a full simulation
environment has been built that will simultaneously calculate the
power demands of a UAV's propulsion, avionics, payload and
communication systems as individual components in a UAV power
profile model. The simulation environment also simulates the energy
sources of the system, using typical steady state and dynamic
characterizations. The effect of intelligent power management
techniques can then be fully quantified via mission
simulations.
By understanding the changing demands in the system it is
possible to introduce significant savings by predicting peak power
demand periods, this will allow the potential to introduce some
control to minimize the peak demands and optimizing the power
architecture to be able to efficiently handle the peaks in the most
efficient way possible.
The simulation environment is supported by an integrated
hardware test platform enabling validation of mission simulations
before flight test.
The paper will present and discuss the concept of the simulation
environment and hardware test platform in the context of
intelligent power management. A case study, focusing on an improved
communications power architecture, is presented. It is intended
that the work discussed in this paper will be used as a foundation
in the analysis of intelligent power management systems in future
work.
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Authors
Citation
Owen, T., "Characterisation of a UAV Electric Architecture and Power Demand Profile for the Purposes of Improving Overall System Efficiency and Performance," SAE Technical Paper 2011-01-2682, 2011, https://doi.org/10.4271/2011-01-2682.Also In
References
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