Mission-oriented dynamic reconfiguration of airborne photovoltaic array based on multidisciplinary model

The solar-powered stratospheric airship is demonstrated overwhelming superiority because of affordable cost, recyclable material and low carbon emission. Progress has been made in the schemes of energy system consisting of curved photovoltaic array, storage, and energy management devices. However, research on various flight conditions and the resulting presence of non-uniform irradiance on the airborne solar array is rare. Moreover, the methods to reduce the power losses of on-board solar array are not investigated. This paper proposed a dynamic reconfiguration method to improve the output performance of on-board solar array in different mission conditions. The partial shading conditions of airborne and ground-based solar arrays are compared. The multiple traveling salesman problem with solar array is introduced. The Simulated annealing algorithm is adopted. The real-time optimization of solar array is obtained with the dynamic reconfiguration method according to the operating condition consisting of various parameters. The results show the proposed method effectively improves the output power of solar array compared with common total-cross-tied connections. The improvements of daily output energy of the airborne array are more than 13.7 %. The work provides a conducive reference for realizing the utilization prospect of solar energy system on aerial vehicles in a low carbon future.