System Identification of a Rigid Wing Airborne Wind Energy System

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to identify aerodynamic parameters of a tethered airborne wind energy system using flight test data and a model-based estimation algorithm, aiding in controller design.

Contribution

It introduces a flight-test-based system identification approach for aerodynamic modeling of a novel airborne wind energy platform.

Findings

Aerodynamic coefficients were successfully estimated from flight data.

The MBPE algorithm proved effective for system identification.

Results support improved control system development for AWE systems.

Abstract

Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) refers to a novel technology capable of harvesting energy from wind by flying crosswind patterns with tethered autonomous aircraft. Successful design of flight controllers for AWE systems rely on the availability of accurate mathematical models. Due to the non-conventional structure of the airborne component, the system identification procedure must be ultimately addressed via an intensive flight test campaign to gain additional insight about the aerodynamic properties. In this paper, aerodynamic coefficients are estimated from experimental data obtained within flight tests using an multiple experiment Model Based Parameter Estimation (MBPE) algorithm.