Minimum Fuel Circling Flight for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in a Constant Wind
Loading...
Authors
Harada, Masanori
Bollino, Kevin
Subjects
Fuel Circling
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Advisors
Date of Issue
2008-08-18
Date
August 18-21, 2008
Publisher
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
Language
Abstract
This paper investigates characteristics of minimum-fuel trajectories for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in high altitude, circling flight under a constant wind. Previous
research has shown that periodic circling flight, consisting of a boost arc (maximum thrust) and a coast arc (minimum thrust), improves the fuel consumption when compared to steady-state circling. Since the periodic flight includes ascending flight at the boost arc and descending flight at the coast arc, it is naturally expected that the wind energy influences the trajectories. In this work, numerical simulations are used to investigate the effects of both wind speed and direction on a UAV flying around one loop enclosed in a cylindrical boundary area. The results show that the optimal wind direction manifests as a tail wind just at the coast arc. In addition, the results demonstrate that the optimal wind direction changes with the wind speed and, in some cases, the trajectory under high winds results in smaller fuel consumption than the zero wind case. Thus, the importance of these results is two fold. First, that the periodic flight reveals the existence of an optimal wind direction for the minimum fuel circling. Second, and probably more importantly, generating optimal trajectories without rejecting wind disturbances provides an autonomous capability of using wind to its advantage and therefore improving fuel consumption or perhaps other mission performance metrics.
Type
Conference Paper
Description
The article of record as published may be located at http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2008-6634
AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit 18 - 21 August 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii
AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit 18 - 21 August 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii
Series/Report No
Department
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
American Astronomical Society (AAS)
IEEE
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
NA
Format
Citation
Distribution Statement
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.