Zephyr: A High Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Air Vehicle ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

the UAV have to be regularly refuelled and will have to land in order to do so, theuser also has to be within a certain range in order control it. By having a UAV thatuses solar power it will not need to be refuelled and can theoretically fly for virtuallyunlimited periods of time, and by using an autopilot system it is possible for the userto be anywhere in the world.2
1.1 History of ZephyrZephyr is a lightweight, solar-electric, HALE UAV that is currently in itsdevelopment stages. The programme started in 2001 as a way of filming an attempt tobreak the world altitude record in a balloon and since then the development of theUAV has continued. The most recent version of the platform, Zephyr 6, flew for 82hours and 37 minutes in the summer of 2008. This nearly trebled the official worldrecord for the longest unmanned flight of 30 hours and 24 minutes (set by GlobalHawk in 2001).In 2001 development started with Zephyr 2, a proof of concept aircraft weighing lessthan 7kg that flew in both free and tethered modes (off the Clifton suspension bridgein Bristol) (see figure 1). After this successful initial research, the programme beganto develop and in 2002 a 12m long, 15kg UAV called Zephyr 3 was created. It wassupposed to fly tethered to a manned balloon attempting a world record height of132,000ft, but unfortunately the balloon had a technical problem and thus both theballoon and the aircraft never flew.After the balloon failed to launch it was decided that there was a possibility of theplatform being developed as a UAV for:Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR);Remote sensing / Earth Observation;Communications relay for ground forces;3
Page 1 and 2: Zephyr:A High Altitude Long Enduran
Page 3 and 4: AcknowledgementsI’d like to thank
Page 5 and 6: ContentsChapter 1 - Introduction an
Page 7: Chapter 1Introduction and Backgroun
Page 11 and 12: The Zephyr 5 project continued with
Page 13 and 14: airframe, with the main aim to impr
Page 15 and 16: 1.2 Environmental IssuesDuring the
Page 17 and 18: order to function, they may not thu
Page 19 and 20: 1.2.3 Cosmic RaysCosmic rays are en
Page 21 and 22: wind speeds. This is to ensure that
Page 23 and 24: crystalline silicon cells and can b
Page 25 and 26: which are then insulated. In order
Page 27 and 28: motion of the aircraft including ro
Page 29 and 30: Within the portable cabins the crew
Page 31 and 32: Simple payloads instructions withou
Page 33 and 34: In the event that the wing does not
Page 35 and 36: Graph 4 shows radiosonde density da
Page 37 and 38: 3.2 NIOSH Lifting EquationThe hand
Page 39 and 40: Variable Description MultiplierD (c
Page 41 and 42: Using the given values, the corresp
Page 43 and 44: 3.3 Airspeed SensorThe current airs
Page 45: 12VSensorPCBZenerDiodeFigure 8. Dia
Page 48 and 49: 3.4 PayloadThe payload is the carry
Page 50 and 51: where λ is the wavelength, c is th
Page 52 and 53: 3.5 Angle of Attack SensorThe angle
Page 54 and 55: The magnetic sensor seemed much mor
Page 56 and 57: Chapter 4Angle of Attack Experiment
Page 58 and 59:
The sensor was powered using an ext
Page 60 and 61:
It has to be noted however, that on
Page 62 and 63:
experience the atmospheric conditio
Page 65 and 66:
5.2.1 Aerial PhotographyThe most co
Page 67 and 68:
meaning that these cameras can be u
Page 69 and 70:
Infoterra have a project called Far
Page 71 and 72:
it out for long endurance missions.
Page 73 and 74:
Figure 18. QinetiQ’s Zephyr5.4 Co
Page 75 and 76:
where it is needed rather than havi
Page 77 and 78:
Appendix 3Schematic diagram of the
Page 79 and 80:
Appendix 5The results table for the
Page 81 and 82:
BibliographyQinetiQ Documents[1] St
Page 83:
[19] Encyclopedia Britannica, 2004.
show all

Zephyr: A High Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Air Vehicle ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?