The German Aerospace Center (DLR) aims to develop an solar powered aircraft able to persistently fly in the stratosphere. The current design has a wingspan of 27 m and a weight of approximately 130 kg. The aircraft shall carry a payload with a maximum weight of 5 kg.
Within the project, the aircraft and two innovative payload systems are developed concurrently. This approach enables the overall design optimization, but increases technical complexity at same time. Besides the technical complexity, organizational complexity is a major issue as well. The development team is spread over 18 different organizational entities at 5 different locations in Germany.
The presentation will introduce the project and it’s challenging goals at the beginning. Example missions for the air system to be built will be explained and the derivation of the top level aircraft requirements discussed.
The second part of the presentation provides a brief overview of historical and current designs and highlights the rationale behind the decision to focus on a heavier than air vehicle for our project. A constraint diagram for solar powered high altitude aircraft will be derived and the most significant challenges for the design will be explained based on this diagram.
The third part of the presentation gives an overview about chosen the Systems Engineering approach. In this project we decided to set up a central model to manage the design. The modelling language is SysML. Tailored profiles have been developed to handle problems like mass management but also communication protocols. The organization of the model will be explained followed by a short overview about the developed profiles. It will also discussed how the model serves as a communication means between the different organizations and most significant lessons learnt will be explained.
The presentation concludes with the current status of the project and an outlook to the next steps until the flight tests, which are scheduled for 2024.