Development of a flight dynamics model of a small unmanned airship

The scientific community has a renewed interest in airships owing to their potential applications in various tasks. The small unmanned airships are often used for inspection and environmental monitoring missions at low altitude. In this paper we introduce a study of two possible tail configurations of the unmanned airship AIUX15, arranged without ballast and ballonets and provided with an electric engine. We developed Matlab/Simulink models to simulate the dynamic behavior of two airship configurations. One of the goals of this research was to conduct an analysis of the feedback control laws for the 6-degrees-of-freedom model, which is linearized around the operational trim conditions. The controller gains were determined according to the pole-placement method. The closed-loop flight control was achieved by means of the state–space approach, to limit the oscillatory rolling motions induced by the rudder deflections.