A Rule-Based Energy Management Technique Considering Altitude Energy for a Mini UAV with a Hybrid Power System Consisting of Battery and Solar Cell

Nowadays, due to climate change and disappearance of fossil fuels, hybrid electric UAVs using renewable energy sources are being developed. In addition, although research on UAVs with a large wingspan and high weight is common due to their long endurance, research on mini UAVs has remained limited....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnergies (Basel) Vol. 17; no. 16; p. 4056
Main Authors Engin, Selin, Çinar, Hasan, Kandemir, Ilyas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.08.2024
Subjects
Algorithms
Alternative energy sources
Altitude
Batteries
Efficiency
Energy management
energy management strategy
Energy management systems
Energy resources
Fuel cells
Fuzzy logic
Lithium
Methods
renewable energy
Renewable resources
rule-based strategy
Solar energy
solar-powered mini UAV
state machine control
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Turkey
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Summary:Nowadays, due to climate change and disappearance of fossil fuels, hybrid electric UAVs using renewable energy sources are being developed. In addition, although research on UAVs with a large wingspan and high weight is common due to their long endurance, research on mini UAVs has remained limited. This study aims to increase the energy capacity of solar-powered mini UAVs and thus extend their endurance by developing a fixed-wing hybrid UAV that can fly with solar energy as much as possible, especially during the cruise phase. In this study, a solar-powered mini VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) UAV with a wingspan of 1.8 m and weight of 3.3 kg is developed and a model of the system consisting of solar cells, a battery, a super capacitor, and a DC/DC converter is created in MATLAB/Simulink software (R2023b). Additionally, state machine control (SMC), a rule-based (RB) energy management strategy (EMS), has been applied to this model. While the power obtained from the sun is divided among the other energy components, the durability of the UAV is increased, and the excess energy is stored as altitude energy to be used when necessary. As a result, in this study, an energy management algorithm including altitude energy has been successfully applied to a solar-powered UAV, achieving an 11.11% energy saving.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en17164056