Resumen de Longitudinal control of a fixed wing UAV

David Villota Miranda, Montserrat Gil Martínez, Javier Rico Azagra

• This article presents an approach to the mathematical model of a fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle prototype. The model is split in two different parts, related to the longitudinal and lateral stability, respectively. For this, Newton-Euler formulation is used as well as basic aerodynamic theory. Aerodynamic coefficients, inertias and characteristic points of the aircraft are obtained through simulations with an open-source software called XFLR-5, and the physical parameters of the model match the prototype’s. Then, a longitudinal control strategy describes the altitude control in a cascade architecture, whose inner loop conveniently manoeuvres the pitch angle by acting on the symmetric flag deflection. Frequency domain techniques are used to design PID controllers.