Mission profile based electrochemical-thermal battery modeling for vertical take-off and landing aerial vehicles
Journal of Energy Storage, cilt.176, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 176
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.est.2026.123342
- Dergi Adı: Journal of Energy Storage
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Compendex, INSPEC
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Battery thermal management, Dual-bus power architecture, High-rate discharge, Lithium-ion battery modeling, Mission-profile-based analysis, VTOL UAV
- Erciyes Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
High-performance vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles impose coupled constraints on battery voltage stability, transient power delivery, and thermal safety under strongly mission-dependent load profiles. This study presents a mission-profile-driven electrochemical-thermal modeling and validation framework for a dual-battery, dual-bus Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) power architecture that electrically isolates propulsion and avionics subsystems. The propulsion battery is modeled using a PyBaMM Single Particle Model with electrolyte (SPMe) coupled to a pack-scale 2D thermal solver to resolve core-to-surface temperature gradients under realistic convection boundary conditions. The avionics battery is represented using empirical equivalent circuit models to capture fast voltage transients associated with servo pulse loads. Model fidelity is evaluated against discharge and pulse response data, and mission feasibility is assessed through constraint-based pass/fail criteria using a 16.2 V operational voltage cutoff and a 60 °C core temperature limit. Four representative VTOL mission scenarios are analyzed, including baseline delivery, short-hop delivery, extended surveillance loiter, and emergency climb. Results show that the baseline 6S1P propulsion configuration is voltage-limited in delivery missions and exhibits a combined voltage and thermal failure during long-duration surveillance, while remaining feasible for short-duration emergency operation due to thermal inertia. An upgraded 6S2P configuration is subsequently evaluated, demonstrating universal mission feasibility across all scenarios. The upgrade increases minimum pack voltage by 2.0–3.5 V and reduces peak core temperature by 27.9–37.9 °C, providing substantial safety margins below thermal limits. These improvements are physically consistent with reduced per-cell current and quadratic scaling of ohmic heat generation, combined with increased thermal mass.Overall, the proposed framework enables predictive comparison of UAV battery architectures under realistic mission envelopes and provides actionable design guidance for voltage stability, thermal management, and redundancy selection in safety-critical VTOL applications. This framework targets certification-relevant safety constraints rather than nominal capacity metrics.