Aircraft Wings Solar Panels

The privately financed project is led by swiss engineer and businessman andré borschberg and swiss psychiatrist and balloonist bertrand piccard who co piloted breitling orbiter 3 the first balloon to circle the world non stop.

Aircraft wings solar panels.

Solar impulse is a swiss long range experimental solar powered aircraft project and also the name of the project s two operational aircraft. The solarstratos airplane will gain its power from 240 square feet of solar panels on its wings. During daylight the solar panels charged the plane s batteries which make up a quarter of the craft s 2 3 tonne weight. The solar impulse has about the same wingspan as a 747 airplane and its wings are covered in nearly 12 000 solar cells.

Solar panels composed by solar cells connected in a certain configuration cover a certain surface of wing or other part of the airplane tail fuselage. The sunglider also draws power from solar panels spread out along its wings which span 78 m 255 ft and feature a total of 10 propellors to make for a top speed of 110 km h 68 mph. So this is not best plane for first timers. Objective to make an inexpensive solar rc plane that can fly by using only energy from the sun to run motors note making and flying this plane requires experience in flying and building of rc planes.

A staggering 17 248 photovoltaic solar cells each one roughly the thickness of a human hair blankets the delicate wings and fuselage. One reason for this is the vulnerability of the wing tips to damage especially during ground handling and taxiing. Figure 16 shows a removable wing tip for a large aircraft wing. It will attempt to reach the stratosphere.

The pilot also climbed to 29 000 feet during the day and glided down. Dryden s environmental research aircraft and sensor technology erast program developed the higher output solar cell technology that has now been transferred to industry allowing production of these cells for the commercial market. During the day depending on the sun irradiance and the inclination of the rays the convert light into electrical energy. These cells bask in the sunlight charging the plane s.

That s about 200 square meters of solar cells. The wing tip assembly is of aluminum alloy construction.