Fuel Cell Powered Flight Project
In order
to begin developing tools and technologies for design and implementation of
fuel cells as powerplants in aeronautical vehicles, a PEM fuel cell UAV
demonstration project was started in the Summer of 2004 as a collaboration
between the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) and the Georgia Tech
Research Institute. A portion of the design work is being provided by
students working in alternative propulsion as part of the NASA University
Research Engineering Technology Institute (URETI) grant to the Georgia
Institute of Technology. The primary research objectives of this project
are: the development of validated tools for a fuel cell aircraft design,
and the demonstration of a series of fuel cell UAVs. The UAV platform is
chosen as the focus of the research effort because of the large number of
potential fuel cell UAV applications, and its suitability in scale and cost
for an academic research program.
Introduction
