Human Being has always been inspired either from movies or his own thinkings.He is always attracted towards technology and its applications.He imagined humanoids we have them,he thought of flying cars or bikes ,we have them too (prototypes) hence whatever human is fantasising its becoming a reality..Today I'm posting about a solar powered copter,an idea came from the minds of bright students of Queen mary,University of london.This copter is known as "Solar Copter",a remote controlled copter powered by sunlight.
Solar Energy is becoming more and more preferrable as it is non exaushtible and harmless source of energy.The first Solar copter was designed to rely completely on solar power
but with a reserve battery
that would take control if the solar panel was not able to provide enough energy.But improvements have been made in the design and the solar copter is capable of flying,taking off,and landing while relying solely on solar energy.With the current design it will fly for as long as the Sun shines in theory and it has been tested experimentally for a substantial amount of time. There is still a lot of work to do, but the students of Queen marry have proved that it works.
that would take control if the solar panel was not able to provide enough energy.But improvements have been made in the design and the solar copter is capable of flying,taking off,and landing while relying solely on solar energy.With the current design it will fly for as long as the Sun shines in theory and it has been tested experimentally for a substantial amount of time. There is still a lot of work to do, but the students of Queen marry have proved that it works.
Many of the parts that Solar copter is made of are
hand-made and the students even came up with their own Sun simulator
that they used for testing purposes. So far, the team has conducted a
series of tests, extensive in nature, and have used different
engineering softwares to model various design aspects, all with the key
idea of improving and developing their prototype further. The team has
high hopes for their invention and believe that this Solar copter will
be useful for a number of tasks which include; surveillance, search and
rescue, transportation and traffic management.
Keeping these
applications in mind, students are working to enhance and improve their
prototype by attempting to add camera, GPS system and other components
which would be changeable and useful as per the nature of task.The team members are still looking for opportunities to reduce
the weight of the current design and increase the thrust. They are also
working on improving the stability and control of the aircraft and at
the same time finding areas where we can further increase its
efficiency. The ideal goal would be to reach a feasible design that is
strong, light and powerful enough to conduct all the purposes
mentioned.You can even think further a field at Mars exploration, while prototype Mars aircraft
have flow at altitude here on Earth most are aimed at long range
exploration. Basing a fleet of light-weight small solar-powered
quadcopters which would be launched from a future lander is an
interesting possibility.
A quadcopter manages to fly by pure thrust - therefore its power consumption is significant compared to its weight. Minimum thrust:weight ratio is 1:1 in order to maintain hover. Translational lift may help reduce that need while in forward flight, but for hover you need 1:1. For a plane, you need something like 1:3 thrust:weight ratio for takeoff, and while in flight you can need less than that. Therefore, because the power consumption required to keep a plane in the air is a hell of a lot less for its mass, it's a lot more practical to use solar panels to keep a plane up.
A quadcopter manages to fly by pure thrust - therefore its power consumption is significant compared to its weight. Minimum thrust:weight ratio is 1:1 in order to maintain hover. Translational lift may help reduce that need while in forward flight, but for hover you need 1:1. For a plane, you need something like 1:3 thrust:weight ratio for takeoff, and while in flight you can need less than that. Therefore, because the power consumption required to keep a plane in the air is a hell of a lot less for its mass, it's a lot more practical to use solar panels to keep a plane up.
