Design, Modeling and Validation of a T-Tail Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This paper addresses the design and modeling process of a T-tail unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). A methodology is presented of how to make tradeoffs among the payload requirements, energy efficiency and aerodynamic stability. A linear decoupled model of longitudinal and lateral dynamics is abstracted from a physical airframe. Instead of subjectively estimating the order, error and time delay for system identification (system ID), equations of motion derived from aerodynamics are employed to provide more precise estimation of the model structure. System ID is carried out with regard to the flight data collected by the autopilot data logger. The resulted model is refined based on the simulation and comparison.