A Small-Scale Prototype to Study the Take-Off of Tethered Rigid Aircrafts for Airborne Wind Energy

The design of a prototype to carry out take-off and flight tests with tethered aircrafts is presented. The system features a ground station equipped with a winch and a linear motion system. The motion of these two components is regulated by an automatic control system, whose goal is to accelerate a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-09
Main Authors: Fagiano, Lorenzo, Nguyen-Van, Eric, Rager, Felix, Schnez, Stephan, Ohler, Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aircraft
Automatic control systems
Entanglement
Flight tests
Ground stations
Linear motion systems
Product design
Wind power
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The design of a prototype to carry out take-off and flight tests with tethered aircrafts is presented. The system features a ground station equipped with a winch and a linear motion system. The motion of these two components is regulated by an automatic control system, whose goal is to accelerate a tethered aircraft to take-off speed using the linear motion system, while reeling-out the tether from the winch with low pulling force and avoiding entanglement. The mechanical, electrical, measurement and control aspects of the prototype are described in detail. Experimental results with a manually-piloted aircraft are presented, showing a good matching with previous theoretical findings.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1608.01846