Development, modeling and simulation of multiple design concepts for a small unmanned airship

A great interest in the utilization of unmanned airships has grown in the past few years, due to their potential applications in surveillance, exploration and monitoring tasks. A study of two possible empennage configurations of an unmanned airship is introduced in this paper. We have developed Matlab/Simulink models to simulate their dynamic behavior and to address the closed-loop flight control problem. In this work our focus is the attenuation of airship lateral oscillations in turbulent air. For this purpose a suitable atmospheric turbulence model has been introduced into the simulations. We have found that an effective control of the airship rolling motions is achieved by using all of the empennage movable aerosurfaces. Initially we have found a set of gains according to the pole-placement method. Subsequently we have carried out the airship feedback optimal control in turbulence according to the technique known as optimal control with exponential rate of decay.