Longitudinal Flight Dynamics of Baseline-II BWB UAV
The objective of this paper is to investigate longitudinal flight dynamics of the said aircraft at loitering flight condition near sea level. Three mathematical dynamic models are used to compute transient response of Baseline-II E-2 BWB along with a proposed model known as Model-N. Model-N is derived to incorporate as many important derivatives, including gravitational and pitch angle factor, as possible. While all these four dynamic models are different in a sense where one model is more simple or complex than the others, the basic architecture of all these models are the same. This paper shows the short-period mode needs serious attention. A control algorithm is needed to overcome its handicap which is below Level 3 damping ratio according to MIL-F-8785C. Improvement to phugoid can be considered secondary, but one must ensure that bringing short period mode to Level 1 flying quality does not make phugiod mode response worse than it is now.