Performance evaluation of thermal soaring unmanned aerial vehicles for coastal surveillance in South Australia

Abstract

Thermals are convective updrafts that occur naturally in the atmospheric boundary layer and can be exploited for energy gain by sailplanes, birds, and more recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Over the last decade, research into thermal soaring UAVs has involved theoretical models and numerical simulations of varying complexity, flight testing, and atmospheric data analysis. In this work, the use of a thermal soaring UAV was applied to a specific operational scenario: the surveillance of 100 kilometers of coastline in South Australia that currently requires manned aerial patrols in the summer months. A model was created to completely define thermals from theoretical and empirical equations, surface properties from aerial images and recorded data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The feasibility of a thermal soaring UAV for this application was evaluated through performance of the UAV in a simulation that maps the flight path and environment containing thermals. © 2012 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.