Energy-optimal path planning based on lithium battery status for solar-powered aircraft

The paper focuses on the problem of energy management for solar-powered aircrafts to plan the flight path. For solar-powered unmarried aircrafts, the energy utilization efficiency and energy stored in the energy system influence the endurance. Energy system of solar-powered aircrafts consists of solar photovoltaic arrays and lithium batteries. One of the challenges is that capacity of lithium batteries is limited. To increase the endurance, an energy management method based on not only lithium batteries status but also gravity to design the flight path is proposed in this paper. Simulation on the integrated model of solar-powered aircrafts has been done, which presents the performance of the energy management strategy.