ICNPAA 2010: Mathematical Problems in
Engineering, Aerospace and Sciences

The design of remotely controlled and unmanned aerial system (UAS) is an important direction in modern aircraft development. Some researches are aimed at UAS’s which use paraglider canopy as their wing. This group of UAS’s can be successfully used in applications where stable, low speed flying and mobility are required.

In this paper, we introduce a UAS test platform being developed by us, which can be used to test different paraglider canopy. We focus on paragliders used for leisure purposes which have take-off weight up to 150 kg. The most important thing when a new type of UAS is born is the automatic control, which has a very critical function: it has to keep the vehicle in stable fly. To realize this function the motion equations and the parameters of the mathematical model must be known. With the help of our test platform this parameters can be identified and measured along with other flight dynamics parameters. The mathematical model applied in this paper and suggested in another paper is focused on the longitudinal motion of powered paragliders. The applied mechanical model of the vehicle represents a single rigid body with three degrees of freedom that consists of a canopy (wing) and the UAS’s body (gondola). The wing and the gondola are connected by lines, which are modelled by rigid rods. A propeller producing a thrust is mounted on the gondola. This simple model is the first approximation of the powered paraglider, but it seems it is enough when we concentrate on its longitudinal motion. First investigations show that the difference remains under 4-5% between the results of the non-linear and linear model.