Soaring flight strategies within CBL

Details

Supervisors

Chatelain, Philippe ; Duponcheel, Matthieu

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil mécanicien, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

The objective of this thesis was to develop an autonomous glider that optimizes soaring flight from wind sensitivity alone. This was done in two main phases: the implementation of a controller for the flight dynamics and the elaboration of a strategy that maximizes soaring performances. First, the low altitude flight strategy was determined in order to avoid a forced landing at all cost. Then, the higher-altitude strategies were compared from safer to riskier. It was found that the riskier the strategy, the more efficient the flight is. Indeed, the riskiest parameters improve the performance by about 20%. This implies flying at higher airspeed and selecting thoroughly the thermals, i.e. engaging altitude-gaining maneuvers only in stronger thermals. However, a trade-off was done in order to guarantee safety throughout the flight. These first results were obtained through simulations with a static closed boundary layer (CBL). These results were then confirmed through a simulation with a dynamic CBL conducted on the remote cluster NIC5.