Literature

How to Launch and retrieve a tethered aircraft

Ampyx, Delft, Aug 26. 2010

One of the main design challenges is the step between an idle state on the ground, and generating energy at operational altitude. To answer this question, all the main requirements a launch and retrieval system has to comply with are outlined. Combining promising design options gave three concepts. One concept based on (1) buoyancy, a concept making use of (2) propeller thrust and (3) a rotational platform to launch the aircraft. Analysing these concepts resulted in abandoning the buoyancy concept, but the other two required more research. This resulted in an improvement of the propeller thrust concept by combining it with a circular runway. The operating principle of the rotating platform concept is analysed by means of computer simulations. Even though the results of the simulations where promising, they where not convincing.