Solar powered remote controlled aircraft

In  December 17, 1903  when Wright brothers build first aircraft,it became discovery, that changed the world completely.They build fixed wing aircraft which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings.In last century though, everything improved from design of aircraft, fuel efficiency and power of engine but aircraft fuel which is most important has not changed and become leading cause of global warming.

Why?
If you read airplane history, you would find that human need and desire of flying is more powerful than flying with renewable energy.So, focus in last century was only on designing and improving efficiency of engine and not on changing its fuel.

So , Why now?
In last decade, awareness of general public about climate change has increase significantly. With this awareness and fuel price that are rising at rocket speed creates catastrophic effect, which pressurizes us to think about alternate fuel for aircraft and one of these alternates is Solar Energy, which we are going to discuss today.

Is it possible?

Yes it is, recently Swiss made Solar Powered Plane, Solar Impulse completed its 4000 miles journey between Europe and Africa successfully. You can read more about it at news website msnbc.


What's the need of building solar powered RC planes?

When we think of building our plane, we know that because of financial and knowledge constraint we can only build models and small planes as our engineering project. We already discussed about RC planes in Aeronautical Projects Post . Solar Powered RC Plane is extension of that post.
Most of you know that planes are the biggest polluter of the world. In a series of steps we need to tackle global warming , solar rc planes could be vital.


Basic Principle:

Sun Energy --> Solar Panels -->Batteries-->Converter-->Motor and Electronics Equipment


How to build one?

Design :

Design of Solar Airplanes(PDF)
Performance Analysis 

Requirements:
MATLAB : For designing your plane
Mono-crystalline Silicon cells
Lithium Polymer Battery
Motor
Management System for Charge/ Discharge and Temperature
Thermal Insulation ( To Safeguard batteries from external environment)

Procedure:

Jon Kalow, Jun Kudo and James Nick Vines discuss complete procedure,prototype and details about building solar RC Plane at their webpage.Click here for complete detail

Useful PDF:
Solar Impulse

Related Projects:

Aeronautics 

Fabrication of Cam less engine

In this modern world where companies are focusing on green energy,cam less engine can become a great alternative.

A cam is a rotating or sliding piece in a mechanical linkage used especially in transforming rotary motion into linear motion or vice-versa. In an engine, it is connected to a shaft (e.g. a cylinder with an irregular shape) that strikes a lever at one or more points on its circular path.

In traditional engine camshaft has a very important role to play while opening and closing of a valve. It was a necessary evil for an engine functioning.Furthermore, because of camshaft, engineers need to choose either efficient engine or power engine but not with both qualities.This is one of the most important factor that makes camless engine a necessity. Though , idea of cam less engine existed from 1899,it has become need of modern world now, when we need power and efficiency both.
A camless engine uses electromagnetic, hydraulic, or pneumatic actuators to open the poppet valves instead. Actuators can be used to both open and close the valves, or an actuator opens the valve while a spring closes it.An actuator is a type of motor for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. It is operated by a source of energy, usually in the form of an electric current, hydraulic fluid pressure or pneumatic pressure, and converts that energy into some kind of motion.

Things required:
Mindstorm lego kit for Camless Engine

Advantages of using cam less engine:
Increase efficiency
Reduce emission
Improve Power

Disadvantage:
High power requirements of the actuator

Uses:
Camless IC Engines
Air Compressors

Related PDF:
Development of a Piezoelectric Controlled Hydraulic Actuator for a Camless Engine
by John Steven Brader
Control of an electromechanical actuator for cam less engines
Camless Engine Control for a Robust Unthrottled Operation

Related Video:

Related Projects :
IC Engines

Water fuel Power Generation System

 Is it possible to use water to power our cars?

Some people claim that it is possible and done before and other thinks, it has never been done and would need more time before this actually happen. But all of them believe that someday we can run our cars on water. I found this project idea interesting enough to discuss with you. If you are believer of  water fuel cell invented by American Stanley Allen Meyer.Then you should try this project and see whether we can run our cars on water or if we can generate power using water fuel cells? 

I have never used water fuel cell myself and Stanley Meyer also lost his case in US Court when he found guilty of fraud.Still I want you to do some research on this topic because many people believes that Stanley finding were true and these fuel cells are going to be future and would solve our energy needs. 

Concept:
As we all know, opposite charges attract, so when we put anode and cathode into the H20, the positive charged hydrogen are attracted by cathode and negative charged oxygen is attracted by anode. Hence, HH and O bonds break to form HHO. This HHO can be supplied directly into Internal Combustion engines for moving the engine shaft.
This process can produce mechanical energy. Furthermore, this mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy by using D.C generator. 30% of power from generator is consumed by electrolysis process and remaining 70% is for our applications.

Useful Links:
Electrolysis of Water
What are Fuel Cells ?
Animation of Fuel Cells

Related PDF:
WFPGS
 Fuel Cell Cars





Related Projects:
Mechanical 
Physics

Pure water with the help of SMS

Pure water with the help of SMS is project based on getting pure water using Hand Pump.Though we have already discussed about various projects based on water purification such as Pedal Powered Water Filter  and  Solar powered water purification system but in Africa the most common source of pure water is Hand Pump. If it stops working, people get force to drink dirty water as a alternative. This project idea solves this problem.

People living in rural area of Africa can use mobile phone to drink clean water. Researchers of Britain  has build Data Transmitter which can be embedded inside the hand pump.

This transmitter sends sms when hand pump stops working. These transmitter  would be installed in 70 villages of Kenya.  Information about this technology has been discussed at General of Hydroinformatics.


Dependance on Hand pump

Millions of people living in Africa are dependent on Handpump, but it is believed that 1/3rd of these hand pumps not works properly.Handpumps located at distant places repairs takes even months. Africa has changed in last decade and it is believed that people who own mobiles are more than people having access to clean water.

That's why for better management of hand pumps Researches from Oxford university has used mobile phone.Researchers put Transmitter  in the handle of the pump. It measures speed of the handle,using which it can measure water flow inside the pump.

Using this technique , central office keeps on getting updates about pumps and mechanical can be mar shelled immediately after fault reports.

Other advantage of this technique is that they can measure total consumption in Kenya.

Related Projects:

Pedal Powered Water Filter
Solar powered water purification system