Researchers at Imperial College London are supporting the design of solar-powered high-altitude pseudosatellites. A major challenge is the prediction of the dynamics of vehicles near the ground, which currently puts severe constraints on their take-off and landing windows.
To address this, Imperial researchers have built a state-of-the-art nonlinear aeroelastic flight simulator for very flexible vehicles. The simulator allows configuration analysis and aeroelastic/flight control design, which has been verified against the University of Michigan X-HALE demonstrator. It has been further interfaced with large-eddy simulations of the local conditions at the atmospheric boundary layer. This gives new insight to optimise both vehicle configurations and flight control strategies for safe performance near the ground.
![Fig 1: snapshots of flexible vehicle trajectory on a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer](https://www.ukarc.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ABLflight_snapshots_thickerwake1-800x430.jpg)
Fig 1: snapshots of flexible vehicle trajectory on a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer
![Fig 2: Aeroelastic model of the X-HALE experimental aircraft](https://www.ukarc.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/xhale_aeroelastic_model1-495x286.jpg)
Fig 2: Aeroelastic model of the X-HALE experimental aircraft
To find out more about the project, please see Imperial’s website.
For further information, contact Professor Rafael Palacios, Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London.
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