Date of Award:

12-2026

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Douglas F. Hunsaker

Committee

Douglas F. Hunsaker

Committee

Tianyi He

Committee

Don Cripps

Abstract

This thesis presents an autopilot for a Bio-Inspired Rotating Empennage (BIRE) aircraft. Most airplanes control yaw using a vertical stabilizer and a moving rudder, a design that has stayed essentially unchanged for nearly a century but adds weight, drag, and surface area to the aircraft. The BIRE removes the vertical tail entirely and instead allows the horizontal tail to rotate about the body x-axis of the airplane; tilting the horizontal tail produces a yaw force, doing the job of a rudder. This thesis first develops a controller for the BIRE where the empennage angle is commanded directly, then extends it to a passive BIRE, in which the empennage actuator is removed and the free spinning empennage is driven indirectly through asymmetric elevator deflection. This work required building two things: a flight simulator that can model a freely spinning surface attached to an airframe, and the autopilot itself, which must control the airplane indirectly through the spinning tail rather than commanding it directly. The result is a working autopilot for a small remote-controlled BIRE aircraft, demonstrated entirely in simulation.

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