23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-1.3.3

HELIPLAT: STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF HIGH ALTITUDE VERY-LONG ENDURANCE SOLAR POWERED PLATFORM FOR TELECOMMUNICATION AND EARTH OBSERVATION APPLICATIONS

G. Frullu
Turin Polytechnic University, Italy

Keywords: heliplat, structural analysis, high altitude, very-long endurance, solar powered platform, telecommunication, earth observation applications

Research is being carried out with the aim of designing the HAVE/UAV (High Altitude Very-long Endurance/ Unmanned Air Vehicle) HELIPLAT (HELIos PLATform). The vehicle should climb to 17-20 km and maintaining a level flight; during the night, a fuel cells energy storage system would be used. A first configuration was worked out and a preliminary structural design of a scale-sized technological demonstrator was completed with the aim of manufacturing a proof-of-concept structure of HELIPLAT. The classical shear-bending-torsion test has been performed. The analytical numerical and experimental results, show extremely good correlation.

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