Improving the design of micro-airship of an agricultural purpose

The unmanned aerial vehicle is effective in monitoring cultivated areas, plant protection activities and animal observation. In contrast to other aircrafts, an unmanned micro-airship can perform a long flight with low energy consumption. The disadvantages of micro-airships include their bulky design, dependence of lift force on the engine operation modes, and small descent speed. The authors conducted research to improve the design of a micro-airship. The list of measures includes reducing the mass of the lift generation system, increasing the energy efficiency of the airship and the reliability of solar batteries, ensuring vertical maneuvering through increasing energy-saving and decreasing in temperature of helium, excluding the dependence of the operability of the lift generation system on the operation mode of the horizontal movement engine, as well as reducing the inertia of lift generation. It is proposed to place photovoltaic elements on the outer surface of the shell above the equatorial line of the micro-airship and use them with accumulators as elements of the system of creating the lifting force. The article presents an algorithm for automatic control of energy flows on the micro-airship. The authors’ idea is to place thermoelectric converters providing heating or cooling of helium on the inner surface of the shell. The article also highlights the principle of reversing the polarity of the supplied voltage in accordance with the operator’s instruction and the temperature between photovoltaic elements and thermoelectric converters. The authors have found that it is possible to prevent overheating of photovoltaic elements at high illumination and significant current consumption due to the effect of thermal energy transfer by thermoelectric converters. The energy-saving effect is achieved by using electric power exclusively to drive the horizontal motion propeller and to ensure the transfer of thermal energy by thermoelectric converters.

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