A Small-Scale Prototype to Study the Take-Off of Tethered Rigid Aircrafts for Airborne Wind Energy
This work provides an experimental validation for take-off procedures in tethered aircraft, which is incremental for the airborne wind energy community.
The paper presents a small-scale prototype for studying the take-off of tethered rigid aircraft for airborne wind energy, demonstrating successful experimental results that match theoretical predictions.
The design of a prototype to carry out take-off and flight tests with tethered aircrafts is presented. The system features a ground station equipped with a winch and a linear motion system. The motion of these two components is regulated by an automatic control system, whose goal is to accelerate a tethered aircraft to take-off speed using the linear motion system, while reeling-out the tether from the winch with low pulling force and avoiding entanglement. The mechanical, electrical, measurement and control aspects of the prototype are described in detail. Experimental results with a manually-piloted aircraft are presented, showing a good matching with previous theoretical findings.