Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2026 Jamie Pickar, Sam Peterson, and Luke Magnuson. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Engineering Department

First Advisor

E. Carr Everbach

Abstract

Airborne wind energy systems (AWES) promise access to higher-altitude wind resources at lower capital cost than conventional turbines. This thesis presents a rigid-wing, ground-generation AWES prototype developed across two coupled subsystems: a kite designed for harnessing wind energy and a generator station designed for efficient pumping-cycle operation.

The kite subsystem progressed through three design generations. We replaced ball-joint wing mounts with fixed joints, derived a tail design using tail volume coefficients, and validated the tail through fusion 360 stress testing and Unity game engine simulation. The final prototype of the kite demonstrated approximately 25 seconds of passive transient flight stability in 20 mph natural wind at Avalon Beach, NJ – the first kite of its kind at Swarthmore to achieve this result.

The generator subsystem implemented field-oriented control on a permanent-magnet synchronous machine driven by space-vector PWM, with maximum power point tracking via power signal feedback. We developed a kite-emulator test-bench using a coupled motor running a quasi-steady-state kite dynamics model. This enabled characterization of the efficiency of both the electrical machine and power electronic converters under implemented control schemes. It also allowed for characterization of the controller’s ability to optimize the aerodynamic system a priori of the kite’s state. The implemented control stack was successfully able to perform maximum power tracking of the aerodynamic system and efficient power transfer from the mechanical system to DC storage.

The work demonstrates a passively stable airframe ready for active control surface implementation and a generator stack ready for integration.

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