Flight Testing of Dynamic Soaring Part-1 : Leeward Inclined Circle Trajectory

Murat Bronz (1) , Gavrilovic Nikola (2) , Antoine Drouin (1) , Gautier Hattenberger (1) , Jean-Marc Moschetta (3)

1 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
2 ISAE-SUPAERO - Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace
3 DAEP - Département Aérodynamique Energétique et Propulsion

This paper presents flight experiments of dynamic soaring as an inclined circle trajectory on the leeward side of a ridge. Energy extraction through dynamic soaring can improve the range and endurance performance of fixed-wing vehicles on certain missions such as ocean monitoring, or flying over orographic wind sources. Real-life application of autonomous dynamic soaring presents challenges such as poor and limited sensor measurements, limited computation, estimation of the dynamic wind field. In this study, we assessed the feasibility of dynamic soaring in the shear layer with a small autonomous glider and showed the positive power contributing segments which are ascending into the positive wind gradient, and descending into the negative wind gradient. Flight test results revealed that, without any complex trajectories, on average, the glider can extract close to 60% of its required power from dynamic soaring. Additionally, a 6-DOF simulation environment is developed with a realistic aircraft model for the initial simulation of advanced trajectories. The results from the flight tests will serve as a database for the researchers to close the gap between simulations and the real flights to achieve a fully autonomous dynamic soaring.

Domaines: Automatique

Murat Bronz, Gavrilovic Nikola, Antoine Drouin, Gautier Hattenberger, Jean-Marc Moschetta. Flight Testing of Dynamic Soaring Part-1 : Leeward Inclined Circle Trajectory. AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum (Session: Subscale Flight Testing and Parameter Identification), Jan 2021, Virtual event, United States. ⟨10.2514/6.2021-1527⟩. ⟨hal-03098769⟩