Performance evaluation and the implementation of the turbocharger, fuel cell, and battery in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

The current study evaluates integrating fuel cell technology into the batteries as an alternative for internal combustion engines (ICEs) for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). To further improve the performance of the UAV, a turbocharger is also integrated to reach higher thrusts and lower fuel consumption rates. The suggested integrated system is designed to provide 6.8 kW power for a UAV with Thrust to Weight Ratio (TWR) of 0.4 and a weight of 17.7 kg. Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is used as the main energy provider of the UAV while Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) is selected to improve the acceleration and the dynamic response of the system. The turbocharger is a hydrogen-fueled ICE with a compression ratio of 11.15. The goal is to evaluate the performance of the integrated system considering fuel consumption, thrust, air consumption, electrical power, state of charge (SOC), and overall efficiency as the output parameters. It is noteworthy to mention that the current study benefits from a detailed Li-Ion battery model using Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) to improve the accuracy/precision of the simulation results.