Thermal Analysis of a High-Altitude Solar Platform

Abstract

High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft operate under adverse thermal conditions, with ambient pressures and temperatures very low and at the same time high amounts of heat introduced by sun radiation. Thus, thermal management of the aircraft systems, such as electronics and batteries is a very challenging task. A first step in solving this is generating accurate models of the thermal dynamics of the HALE. This paper presents the thermal analysis of a solar-electric stratospheric HALE at the ground case. A thermal mathematical model based on first principles was developed for such an analysis. In a further step, an initial test campaign was performed. The test the campaign included static and dynamic temperature measurements on an aircraft wing structure segment. The experiments throughout this test campaign showed good compliance of the results with the previously derived mathematical models, with differences of less than 5°C between the measured and simulated temperature curves.