Airship aerodynamics - Simple control of the elementary flight parameters

Abstract

This article describes a simple control of elementary flight variables for an unmanned airship such like airship flight altitude and airship azimuth or flight direction. For this purpose were all controllers designed on the basis of nonlinear mathematical model of airship flight mechanics which was obtained by PEM (Projection Equivalent Method) [13]. All controllers were designed for “silent” airship flight mode. “Silent” flight mode means, that during flight on-board airship controllers compensate oscillations about all three airship axes. By means of these controllers, it is possible to achieve required controller precision and thereby to guarantee “silent” airship flight mode which is necessary for photo or video recording or other airborne measurement tasks. This paper not only shows simulation results, but also provides measured data from real experimental airship flights which were realized by applying these controllers.