As the aviation has realized the seriousness of pollution and emission issues, people have taken efforts to use renewable energy on planes or UAVs. This paper focused on the applications of solar and hydrogen energy to UAVs. A hybrid power system, consisting of solar cells, fuel cells and lithium batteries, was discussed. To achieve the hybridization of power sources, a prototype of a power management unit (PMU) was fabricated. After the installation of a test system for synthesizing power sources, PMU and load, a series of ground tests were executed to verify the mathematical model of lithium battery and the reliability of the hardware. Ground data confirmed the feasibility of hybrid power system.
Fuel cells are together used with solar cells and lithium cells in the propulsion system of hybrid UAVs. According to the result of fuel cell’s performance experiment and based on the radial basis function interpolation, a fuel cell system performance prediction model is established. Moreover, the analysis on the model’s result shows a good accuracy of the method and also a good applicability for the preliminary design of hybrid UAVs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.