The solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV) utilizes a Curved Photovoltaic Array (CPVA) mounted on its wing surface to harness solar energy during daylight hours, storing any excess energy in the battery for nocturnal use. However, the irregularity of the wing surface poses challenges for accurately modeling the SUAV's photovoltaic energy yield and calculating the output of photovoltaic power.
To maximize the photovoltaic output of the solar UAV, it is crucial to design a CPVA interconnection tailored to a specific airfoil and optimize the hardware to minimize the impact of the wing's curvature on photovoltaic performance. This paper presents a CPVA model and conducts an analysis of the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) output for different photovoltaic configurations, demonstrating more efficient configurations that yield higher outputs. The results show that the proposed Near Layout (NL) configuration achieves a significant increase of 6%~10% in all-day energy for solar aircraft operating in mid-latitude regions compared to the conventional configuration of the ideal planar wing model.