A

TERM PAPER

ON

A REVIEW ON THE INNOVATION OF SOLAR POWERED AIRCRAFT

PRESENTED BY

ABOLORUNKE FRIDAY NIYEHMI

ENG1102476

SUBMITTED TO

ENGR AKHATOR PETER

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

UNIVERSITY OF BENIN

DATE: 09/05/2016
 TABLE OF CONTENT

1 INTODUCTION

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

3 CONCLUSION

4 RECOMMENDATION

5 REFERENCES
 ABSTRACT

This paper considers level flight and endurance for aircraft equipped with solar cells on the upper
surface of the wings. These solar cells collect energy that is stored in a battery and used to drive a
propeller.
Generally, aircraft uses conventional fuel. These fuel having limited life, high cost and the product
of combustion which causes pollution to the environment. So there is great demand of use of non-
exhaustible unlimited source of energy like solar energy. Solar aircraft is one of the ways to utilize
solar energy. A few manned and unmanned solar powered aircraft have been developed and flown
in the last 30 years. Solar aircraft uses solar panel to collect the solar radiation for immediate use
but it also stores the remaining part for the night flight. This paper intended to stimulate research
on solar power as a source of energy for aviation. The basic challenges for a solar powered aircraft
are Geographical area of operation, payload, Energy collection and utilization, and design
parameter. This research starts with the history/origin of the technology, its sources, proceeds
down to the use of the technology and its applications other than conventional fuel; its application
to the world and Nigeria, the economic importance, the working principles of the technology, what
the effects and environmental impacts are, the research therein and the future of the technology in
Nigeria. For if development is encouraged by relevant agencies, solar powered aircraft might truly
be used in future for different types of aerial monitoring and unmanned flights.
 1.0 INTRODUCTION

The Energy comes in different forms. Light is a form of energy. Sun is source of energy called
sunlight. Sunshine is free and never gets used up. Also, there is a lot of it. The sunlight that heats
the Earth in an hour has more energy than the people of the world use in a year. A little device
called a solar cell can make electricity right from sunlight. The dream of flight powered only by
the suns energy or sunlight has long motivated scientists and hobbyists. A solar aircraft is one
which collects energy from the sun by means of photovoltaic solar cells. The energy may be used
to drive electric motor to power the aircraft. Such airplanes store excess solar energy in batteries
for night use. Also there are rapidly increasing traffic problems in world and in our country also,
so it is required to go for such small solar aircrafts which can be used for transporting goods or
materials between places at short distance. Using solar panels there is more space due to escape of
engines and turbines. In 1783, dream of flying became reality Historians credit France's
Montgolfier brothers with the first pioneering balloon flight. Next revolution was in 1903, when
Orville and Wilbur Wright made their Flyer 1 and flew 36 meters with their plane. Flyer 1 was
a petrol engine, just like later aircraft. Nowadays, aviation accounts for three percent of all CO2-
emissions produced by mankind. This does not seem much, but more important is that profit of
commercial aviation strongly relies on the oil price. Due to high prices of crude oil lately, profits
of commercial aviation have been diminished and aviation industry is now looking for alternative
energy sources to propel modern-day aircraft. An option which is rarely considered is solar energy,
an option we wanted to investigate.

2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW

Many advancements have been made in the aviation industry. In todays world, the ever-growing,
constantly evolving need for eco-friendly energy sources has become somewhat of a standard
effort within the field of engineering. In recent years, engineers along with the public eye have
realized the importance of contributing to the preservation of the environment as new technologies
are created to further advance engineering proficiency. Renewable energy sources along with
nonpolluting energy technology are quickly becoming the top priority energy research topics
among todays engineers.
Solar energy has been undergoing increasingly valuable improvement and has made significant
advancements in its efficiency and its uses over the centuries of being used by human civilization.
One of the latest innovations in aerospace engineering is using solar power to generate enough
electricity to fly a solar panel bearing airplane for a long duration of time.
Typical solar powered airplanes consist of solar panels covering the surface area of the airplanes
wings, a motor running off of the solar energy, and a battery storing power for flight throughout
the night. A solar powered airplane has many challenges to overcome with these components.
Weight, power, and size are all issues that are problematic and key in designing an airplane.
When designing a solar powered aircraft, one of the most important things to consider is the weight
of the aircraft. The weight needs to be minimized to reduce the amount of power needed to create
lift in the aircraft. This can be achieved by using light, weight materials and minimizing material
use, however, material minimization can reduce the structural strength. Engineers must design
lightweight, yet strong, framework for the wings and body of the aircraft. As the weight of the
plane increases, the power requirement to create lift is increased requiring a demand for a more
powerful engine, more fuel cells, a larger battery, and increased strength that will increase the
weight of the aircraft. Finding the balance of weight to available power is vital in designing a solar
powered aircraft.
Over the years several stand-out designs of solar powered airplanes have been brought to the
attention of the engineering public. For instance, such models as the Sky Sailor, Solar Impulse,
the Zephyr, Helios, and Solong are instrumental past experiments which can be used to aid in
technical improvements of solar powered flight through investigation. These past examples under
proper research will assist in further progressing solar powered flight technology so that someday
this project may be used in more and more meaningful ways.

2.10 SKY SAILOR

The Sky-Sailor, an unmanned solar airplane prototype built at ETH Zrich, just proved the
feasibility of solar flight at constant altitude. On the 20th of June 2008 at 12h33, the 3.2m airplane
took off from the MG Zugerland airfield in Niederwil, Switzerland. During the afternoon, the half
square meter of solar cells gave enough energy to power the motor and at the same time completely
charge the battery, while the airplane was following a circular trajectory at 200m above ground.
The night proved to be quite windy which required more power than expected. This flight phase
from dusk till dawn was particularly critical as the only source of energy was the battery that
slowly discharged. In the early morning at 6h10, the solar panels started progressively to supply
power again. The battery, which still had 5.8% capacity, started a new charge cycle. At 15h35 on
Saturday 21st, it was completely full, which demonstrated an onboard energy higher than 24h
before, proving thus continuous flight using solar energy only. The airplane landed some minutes
later after a flight of more than 27 hours. With an average speed of 32.2 km/h, it covered more
than 874 kilometers what represents more than the distance from Zurich to London
The main challenge lies in the design and the sizing optimization of the various elements that have
to be extremely lightweight and efficient, and consume extremely low power for what concerns
the electronics. The airframe, made of composite materials, was realized by Walter Engel, a world
expert in ultra-light model airplane construction.
Sky-Sailor is the first to demonstrate this ability with a wingspan of less than 4 meters at a constant
altitude. The Sky-Sailor solar airplane project started within the framework of a study for the
European Space Agency to evaluate the feasibility of continuous solar flight on Mars. A first step
was the realization of such flight on Earth with a demonstrator prototype. That became the subject
of the PhD Thesis of Andr Noth, member of the Sky-Sailor project team in the Autonomous
Systems Lab of EPFL that moved to ETHZ in 2006.
 Fig 2.1 sky sailor sub system

2.20 SOLAR IMPULSE

Solar Impulse is a Swiss long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft project, and also the
name of the project's two operational aircraft. The privately financed project is led by Swiss
engineer and businessman Andr Borschberg and Swiss psychiatrist and aeronaut Bertrand
Piccard, who co-piloted Breitling Orbiter 3, the first balloon to circle the world non-stop.[2] The
Solar Impulse project intends to achieve the first circumnavigation of the Earth by a piloted fixed-
wing aircraft using only solar power.
The aircraft are single-seat monoplanes powered by photovoltaic cells and capable of taking off
under their own power. The prototype, often referred to as Solar Impulse 1, was designed to
remain airborne up to 36 hours. It conducted its first test flight in December 2009. In July 2010, it
flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly nine hours of night flying, in a 26-hour
flight. Piccard and Borschberg completed successful solar-powered flights from Switzerland to
Spain and then Morocco in 2012, and conducted a multi-stage flight across the United States in
2013. REF Solar Impulse Project. "HB-SIA Mission". Retrieved5 December 2009
A second aircraft, completed in 2014 and named Solar Impulse 2, carries more solar cells and
more powerful motors, among other improvements. In March 2015, Piccard and Borschberg began
an attempt to circumnavigate the globe with Solar Impulse 2, departing from Abu Dhabi in the
United Arab Emirates. The aircraft was scheduled to return to Abu Dhabi in August 2015 after a
multi-stage journey. By 1 June 2015, the plane had traversed Asia, and on 3 July 2015, it completed
the longest leg of its journey, from Japan to Hawaii. During that leg, however, the aircraft's
batteries experienced thermal damage that took months to repair. The Solar Impulse is expected to
resume the circumnavigation in April or May 2016. [Al Wasmi]
2.30 SOLONG
The SoLong solar plane is a remote controlled sailplane developed by AC Propulsion. With a
wingspan of 15.6ft and weighing only 28.2lb, SoLong was designed to fly continuously in the sky
without ever landing to recharge. The remote controlled aircraft features an autopilot control
system with GPS, barometric, and inertial references; in addition, the plane includes a video
camera giving its pilots on the ground a view from above. [ Michael A] What makes SoLong
unique is its use of laptop derived lithium-ion batteries. Originally AC Propulsion outfitted
SoLong with 100 LG Chem 18650 lithium-ion laptop cells to power its 1hp electric motor. These
cells proved to be too small to store enough energy to power the craft throughout the entire night.
AC Propulsion then retrofitted the plane with 120 Sanyo 18650 lithium-ion batteries. With the
new Sanyo batteries SoLong managed to fly for over 48 hours nonstop beginning June 1, 2005
before needing to land June 3, proving that it could store enough energy during the daylight hours
to power the aircraft during the night. The new Sanyo batteries held 214 watt-hr/kg compared to
the 185 watt-hr/kg of the old LG batteries. This improvement allowed the SoLong plane to capture
enough of the suns energy during the day to enable it to fly at night; in fact, the only reason SoLong
was landed after 48 hours was because, the pilots were exhausted, not because the battery was
low on juice, said Alan G. Cocconi, founder of AC Propulsion. [Michael A] Withstanding the
exhausted pilots, SoLong could have potentially stayed aloft for another two to three days.
With that said, SoLong is still not quite up to the task of staying aloft reliably for days on end; the
only way it achieves its success is because its pilots glide the plane throughout most of the daylight
hours in an effort to get as much of the energy captured by the solar panels into the batteries instead
of wasting it on powering the motor. Speaking of solar panels, SoLong is currently outfitted with
38 Sunpower A300 single-crystal silicon solar cells on each wing, covering roughly 13 square feet.
The cells have an efficiency of 20% and combined they produce 225 watts of electricity. All told,
the cells weigh about 1.2kg. Arguably the hardest part of installing the cells was shaping them to
the wing surface, which Cocconi says is, like bending a 5-in square of microscope slide glass.
When SoLong originally flew, space-grade solar cells with efficiencies of 28% were available, but
they cost roughly 100 times more than the Sunpower solar cells making them impractical. That
said, solar cells of such efficiency would make 40% more power than the ones currently installed
on SoLong, such cells would allow SoLong to easily achieve its goal of nonstop flight for several
days. [Michael A]
With solar panel efficiency and battery energy density always advancing, planes similar to SoLong
would have little trouble flying nonstop for daysperhaps weeksat a time, without having to
constantly glide the plane during the daylight hours. It has been nearly four years since AC
Propulsion first flew SoLong, and four years is quite a long time in the world hi-tech electronics
components. Today, some photovoltaic solar cells have reached efficiencies of over 40% in lab
conditions, and off-the-shelf solar panels from companies like Sunpower are reaching efficiencies
of over 23%. Additionally, new types of thin-film solar cells are being developed that would make
the process of covering a plane in solar cells much easier, although efficiencies have lagged behind
more traditional types of solar cells. The loss in efficiency could be offset by the reduction in
weight, and the fact that it should be possible to cover more of a planes surface with thin-film cells
than would be possible with ordinary solar cells. With that said, new thin-film solar cells are
beginning to achieve efficiencies close to that of their wafer based counterparts. Researchers at
the U.S. Department of Energys National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently achieved
efficiencies of 19.9% with copper indium gallium di selenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cells.

2.40 ZEPHYR-6
In July of 2008, British engineers designed what looked to be a large model airplane called the
Zephyr-6. The plane that was powered solely by solar power, rays from the sun. It was able to stay
aloft for more than three days and three nights and set an unofficial aviation record because no
previous unpiloted plane could match such a feat. The solar plane did not use much power because
it had a large wingspan that caused greater lift than it did drag. If the plane has greater lift it uses
less thrust, meaning power to keep it aloft. The long narrow wings on the plane reduced the drag
of the plane, which is the slowing force of air on a moving object, allowed the plane to act like a
glider and remain airborne.
The aircraft is battery operated. The power of the batteries used during flight was provided by
Solar energy. The solar energy was able to recharge the Lithium-Sulphur batteries during the day
that gave it power during the day and night. Lithium-Sulphur batteries are the result of a unique
combination of each of its chemistries. The very high electrochemical power of the lithium mixed
with the sulfur gives the battery the ability to recharge. The aircraft not only uses United Solar
Ovonic solar arrays, but also a full flight-set of Sion Power batteries, as well as a novel solar-
charger. The batteries involvement in this aircraft is crucial to its record breaking flight length.
The solar panels are amorphous silicon arrays covering the wings of the aircraft. Amorphous
silicon thin film PV modules are built by depositing a thin layer (less than one 10,000th of a cm)
of silicon on top of a substrate. The panels are thin, no thicker than a sheet of paper and their
purpose is to power the plane by solar energy. The solar panel converts about one tenth to one
sixth of the energy from the sun into electricity.
The weight of the aircraft deals with the materials used to build it. It is made out of ultralight
carbon fiber material causing it to weigh 30 kg. Even though the carbon fiber material is light the
molecules that construct it are very strong.

3.0 C0NCLUSION
This paper has investigated the requirement that a solar-powered aircraft must meet to achieve
perpetual flight, to achieve a positive energy balance. The requirement for perpetual solar-powered
flight is formulated in terms of the power ratio for the various aircraft reviewed, which is a
dimensionless parameter that depends on the aircraft configuration and the environment. From the
research made its was discovered that, perpetual solar-powered flight is achievable if and only if
the power ratio, evaluated at the average sun elevation, is greater than or equal to the reciprocal of
the daylight duty cycle. The identification of this so-called perpetuity threshold as the requirement
for perpetual flight constitutes the main original contribution of this paper. The approach of this
paper shows a comparison of the requirements for perpetual solar powered flight

4.0 RECOMMENDATION
The future of renewable energy resource like solar power in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized,
not only in the aviation industry, it also applies to virtually every sector of her economy. It is a
huge technological advancing venture yet to be given due considerations as seen in other advance
economies of the world and this also will help in giving us a cleaner, greener healthier environment
and reduce overdependence on conventional fuel.
It is therefore recommended that the private and public sectors in the aviation industry, should
invest heavily into solar powered aircraft and also those interested in carrying out research in solar
powered aircraft should be encouraged both at postgraduate and undergraduate levels

5.0 REFERENCES
1. Dornheim, Michael A. SoLong Solar-Powered Drone Stays Aloft for 48 Hr.. Aviation
Week. 3/16/2009
2. http://charleslindbergh.com/history/paris.asp Retrieved 21/04/2016
3. http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Lithium_Sulphur_BatteriesRetrieved 23/01/2016
4. http://www.signetsolar.com/solar%20PV%20energy/index.htm Retrieved 23/04/2016
5. Press release. Record Makes Thin-Film Solar Cell Competitive with Silicon Efficiency.
24 Mar. 2008. U.S. Department of Energys National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 18
Mar. 2009 <http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2008/574.html>. Retrieved 01/05/2016
6. SunPower. "SunPower Announces World-Record Solar Cell Efficiency." Press release.
SunPower Announces World-Record Solar Cell Efficiency. 12 May 2008. SunPower. 18
Mar. 2009 <http://investors.sunpowercorp.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=309613>.
7. Wasmi, Naser. "After months-long hiatus, Solar Impulse 2 gets set to fly again", The
National, March 11, 2016. Retrieved 01/05/2016
8. http://www.sky-sailor.ethz.ch/docs/SkySailor27hFlight-21June2008 Retrieved
21/04/2016