Hover Corridor for a Stratospheric Airship

Abstract This paper addresses the issue of designing a feasible set of trajectories for a stratospheric airship model with the help of bifurcation based direct continuation methodology. An airship envelope is framed based on the maneuverability characteristics of the airship in the steady level circular turn maneuver. From the propounded envelope, appropriate trajectories are defined based on the application to which the airship is deployed. The proposed trajectories are then maneuvered using the nonlinear sliding mode based controller in conjunction with the three dimensional lookahead-based steering guidance law. The pertinent simulation results are presented to prove the efficacy of the designed hover corridor for the airship.