Research on advanced structure design method of solar powered UAV

solar powered UAV, the mass and structural dynamics characteristics of solar powered UAV with different layouts and different structure forms in time and frequency domain are studied in this paper. Firstly, the thin-walled structure models of solar powered UAV with flying wing layout and diamond wing layout are established with the same solar panel laying area. The flutter characteristics are calculated by P-K method in frequency domain, and the response characteristics of the structure under dynamic loads are calculated in time domain. The dynamic characteristics and mass characteristics of solar powered UAV with large aspect ratio with different layouts are compared. Then, the rhombus grid structure is applied to the wing structure, and the finite element model of the rhombus grid structure is established to study the structural dynamics and mass characteristics of the diamond wing layout solar powered UAV. The results show that the frequency domain and time domain methods can accurately obtain the structural dynamic characteristics. The flutter characteristics and gust response characteristics of the solar powered UAV with diamond wing layout are better than those with flying wing layout, but the mass of diamond wing layout solar powered UAV is too large. The rhombus grid structure diamond wing layout solar powered UAV has good structural stiffness and higher flutter speed, and its structural mass is 21.5% lighter than that of the thin-walled diamond wing layout solar poWered UAV.