Persistent Monitoring Platforms Final Report

Bennett, C L

关键词: AIRCRAFT;    ALTITUDE;    ENERGY DENSITY;    ENERGY STORAGE;    ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS;    MONITORING;    POWER PLANTS;    TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER;   

DOI  :  10.2172/902249
RP-ID  :  UCRL-TR-228327
PID  :  OSTI ID: 902249
Others  :  TRN: US200717%%503

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

This project was inspired and motivated by the need to provide better platforms for persistent surveillance. In the years since the inception of this work, the need for persistence of surveillance platforms has become even more widely appreciated, both within the defense community and the intelligence community. One of the most demanding technical requirements for such a platform involves the power plant and energy storage system, and this project concentrated almost exclusively on the technology associated with this system for a solar powered, high altitude, unmanned aircraft. An important realization for the feasibility of such solar powered aircraft, made at the outset of this project, was that thermal energy may be stored with higher specific energy density than for any other known practical form of rechargeable energy storage. This approach has proved to be extraordinarily fruitful, and a large number of spin-off applications of this technology were developed in the course of this project.