ETD

• ageing
• battery
• electro-thermal model
• flight simulation
• Hybrid Pulse Power Characterization (HPPC) test
• State Of Charge (SOC)
• State Of Health (SOH)
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)

The growing use of small-size Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in both civil and military applications is nowadays driving the demand for efficient, compact, lightweight and reliable power storage systems, with Lithium-Polymer (Li-Po) batteries being a common choice. The battery behaviour is thus crucial to characterize both performances and the safety of a UAV. In addition, the battery degradation due to ageing can have a strong impact on operability, costs and maintainability of these platforms. This MSc Thesis deals with the characterization, carried out through experiments and simulations, of the performances of a commercial-off-the-shelf LiPo battery pack used for drones applications (MaxAmps 2000 mAh, 6S, 22.2 V) as functions of the State-Of-Charge (SOC) and the State-Of-Temperature (SOT), aiming at creating a dynamic model to be used as an observer for the in-flight health-monitoring of these critical items.
A test bench has been set-up at the Fly-By-Wire Laboratory of the DICI Aerospace Division of the University of Pisa to identify the parameters of an electro-thermal model of the battery pack, derived from relevant literature, via Hybrid Pulse Power Characterization (HPPC) at different environmental temperatures as well as to evaluate possible ageing phenomena via flight missions’ simulations.