FARNBOROUGH, England — BAE Sytems is developing a solar cell that could power a unmanned aerial vehicle just by charging its skin.
There’s no need for a traditional battery. The system that’s still in development charges a hard composite material that could act as the structure of an aircraft, a vehicle or even a piece of soldier’s gear.
Specifically, BAE Systems forsees the solar system to be used on a UAV or soldier system since weight is so crucial for both, said Darren Buckle, a manager for BAE Systems’ Advanced Technology Centre. A battery usually just adds unnecessary weight.
A solar system could provide power for a long endurance UAV if the system can absorb solar rays even when it’s not sunny. This is a challenge for BAE Systems engineers, Buckle said. It’s one of the priorities for its development program. The engineers want to make sure the solar cells can power the UAV even on the many foggy or cloudy days here in England.
The solar cell was just one of BAE Systems’ Advanced Material Technologies on display. Adaptiv Camouflage was also highlighted like it has been at other trade shows. BAE Systems has already shown it can cloak a tank with a material that uses metal pixels to alter the heat signature. It can make a tank look more like a car when viewed by its heat signature.
Thermoplastic spall liners were also seen here. BAE is not the first to make a spall liner and it’s a surprise more are not in military vehicles. The idea of the spall liner is to contain blast fragments if an IED or RPG reach the inside of a vehicle. The flak that pings around a cabin is what often kills or maims the passengers. A spall liner absorbs those fragments protecting the soldiers or Marines inside.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Theory if you were to incorporate sodium into the solar composite you can further improve on the power and energy source. You can also create a transparent composite where solar rays are trapped and made to reflect within the trap Increasing the energy output of the solar composite. Once the light enters it can no longer escape and is bounced around increasing the heat energy. There are many tweaks that can be further applied to enhance the solar composites output can you think of some.
Fail. Its been done.
I think this is the big advancement in solar power that the world's been waiting for.
well depends on the application, for commercial purpose it would be highly dependent on how cost efficient the power storage composite material is and of course how effective is it's capacity which will determine how much it would cost per unit and thus how many ppl can likely afford the equipment that takes advantage of it.
But for the military application where the cost is less restrictive than the civilian sector, and where weight and space is in even shorter supply, it would likely provide a way to bypass the current limitation on the power storage that are currently preventing their wide usage.
True that. Most civilian advances are trickle down from the military applications. This is no different and I look forward where this will take us down the road in 5 years.
A downside is any solar system is exposed fully to shrapnel and debris. A battery backup should always be used.
not to mention grunts
IN GOD WE TRUST. AND THE MARINES CORPS
Horribly misplaced dude.
Look at the fat bloke ready to waste more of our tax money, just great.
If it works, and works great, what's the problem?
Why not put vast solar arrays in space and beam the energy to earth via a system of microwave transmitters and receivers? You could beam it directly to a receiver worn by a grunt or a fighter and store it in batteries.
Wouldn't you then be bombarding soldiers with concentrated microwave radiation?
The effect of the transmission on the grunt can be worked out, but there's an even bigger problem related to it that governs it's viability.
In space based energy generation the space solar array will be aiming at a 'relatively' stationary rectenna, MASSIVE rectenna and while rectenna is VERY efficient comparatively, that's under the assumption that the rectenna is capable of capturing the transmission beam efficiently (which is easy to do when the rectenna is larger than the beam)
now you are going to try aiming the tight microwave beam onto a rectenna with a surface area no more than a meter square at most for a grunt.
that's assuming the grunt is stationary of course, if he moves… then any semblance of efficiency is likely going to evaporate.
The concept itself for power generation is valid and still under research (the difficulty in designing and setting the solar satellites are much more significant than most ppl realize), but we are no where near feasible operation of such system in the near future until more development are done on the design.
And once that's done, there's still the question on how exactly one get it to work efficiently on something as small as a grunt receiver… we're not exactly keen on throwing power and waste the majority to power some soldiers considering the cost of 'theoretical' satellites for it (which govers the cost per power unit transmitted through), if there are better alternatives.
i want one of those plating my house