Solar powered UAV-solar power system : environmental testing for components at sub-zero temperatures

This report serves as a documentation of the author’s work during his final year of study at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), with him taking up the solar unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) project as his final year project. The author is part of the solar energy team, which comprises of two people, the other person being Andy. The report includes calculation on the mass of solar modules and MPPTs, which is useful in the estimation of the centre of gravity of the solar UAV. It also pushed the solar energy team to think of a new method for encapsulating the solar module, which will be discussed in the report, as the conventional method of encapsulation makes the module too heavy for usage on the UAV. Sub-zero temperature testing of components has also been done. Test methodologies, results, and discussions of test data are to be talked about extensively in this report, and hopefully it will provide a better insight into the performance of each component at the cruise altitude of the solar UAV.Bachelor of Engineering (Aerospace Engineering