Flight dynamics modeling of a flexible wing unmanned aerial vehicle

•A model for dynamics system in-flight testing is developed for flexible UAV.•A platform for in-flight identification and the acquisition system are described.•The effect of considering elastic modes in flight dynamics is highlighted. This paper shows the results of traditional aerodynamic analysis and the flexible flight dynamics modeling including the effects of structural motion for a flexible wing unmanned aerial vehicle. The influence of some design parameters such as wing flexibility, horizontal/vertical tail aerodynamics is investigated for aeroelasticity and flight dynamics of flexible aircraft. The research platform is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), made of composite material. Its wing span is 4 m and reaches a high aspect ratio, whose value is 18.9. For a traditional analysis, the Vortex Lattice Method (VLM) was used to obtain conventional aerodynamic and control derivatives. The flexible flight dynamics model is based on the work of Waszack and Schmidt. In this approach, it is used the mean-axes reference system and it is assumed that structural deformations is small and described by a set of eigenmodes. The dynamics model incorporates the first normal modes obtained by Ground Vibration Test (GVT) campaigns. A focus of the paper lies on providing a useful model for dynamics system identification and in-flight aeroelastic testing. A developed platform for in-flight system identification and the acquisition system is described. A flight path reconstruction process from a flight test campaign results is shown.