Lyu Guanghua1, Dingxiao Jiao2, Abdulrahman AlKassem3, Dakan Ying1, Rizwan Arshad1, Jiahua Ni1, Zhe Liu1, Syed Hadi Hussain Shah1,*
FDMP-Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing, Vol.22, No.4, 2026, DOI:10.32604/fdmp.2026.077648
- 07 May 2026
Abstract Desert photovoltaic, PV, installations experience significant efficiency losses due to dust accumulation, which also promotes localized overheating, known as hotspots, caused by uneven solar irradiance and partial cell shading. These hotspots can accelerate material degradation and increase the risk of permanent panel damage. This study presents an autonomous maintenance strategy based on a cooperative swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, enabling contactless dust removal and active hotspot cooling. The approach combines high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics to characterize aerodynamic downwash for effective dust detachment with fluid–structure interaction analysis to verify the structural integrity of PV panels… More >