Gust response analysis and wind tunnel test for a high-aspect ratio wing

A theoretical nonlinear aeroelastic response analysis for a flexible high-aspect ratio wing excited by harmonic gust load is presented along with a companion wind tunnel test. A multidisci- plinary coupled numerical calculation is developed to simulate the flexible model wing undergoing gust load in the time domain via discrete nonlinear finite element structural dynamic analysis and nonplanar unsteady vortex lattice aerodynamic computation. A dynamic perturbation analysis about a nonlinear static equilibrium is also used to determine the small perturbation flutter bound- ary. A novel noncontact 3-D camera measurement analysis system is firstly used in the wind tunnel test to obtain the spatial large deformation and responses. The responses of the flexible wing under different static equilibrium states and frequency gust loads are discussed. The fair to good quanti- tative agreements between the theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that the presented analysis method is an acceptable way to predict the geometrically nonlinear gust response for flex- ible wings.

Aeroelastic scaling laws for gust load alleviation control system

Gust load alleviation （GLA） tests are widely conducted to study the effectiveness of the control laws and methods. The physical parameters of models in these tests are aeroelastic scaled, while the scaling of GLA control system is always unreached. This paper concentrates on studying the scaling laws of GLA control system. Through theoretical demonstration, the scaling criterion of a classical PID control system has been come up and a scaling methodology is provided and veri- fied. By adopting the scaling laws in this paper, gust response of the scaled model could be directly related to the full-scale aircraft theoretically under both open-loop and closed-loop conditions. Also, the influences of different scaling choices of an important non-dimensional parameter, the Froude number, have been studied in this paper. Furthermore for practical application, a compen- sating method is given when the theoretical scaled actuators or sensors cannot be obtained. Also, the scaling laws of some non-linear elements in control system such as the rate and amplitude sat- urations in actuator have been studied and examined by a numerical simulation.

Gust load alleviation wind tunnel tests of a large-aspect-ratio flexible wing with piezoelectric control

An active control technique utilizing piezoelectric actuators to alleviate gust-response loads of a large-aspect-ratio flexible wing is investigated. Piezoelectric materials have been extensively used for active vibration control of engineering structures. In this paper, piezoelectric materials further attempt to suppress the vibration of the aeroelastic wing caused by gust. The motion equation of the flexible wing with piezoelectric patches is obtained by Hamilton＇s principle with the modal approach, and then numerical gust responses are analyzed, based on which a gust load alleviation（GLA） control system is proposed. The gust load alleviation system employs classic propor tional-integral-derivative（PID） controllers which treat piezoelectric patches as control actuators and acceleration as the feedback signal. By a numerical method, the control mechanism that piezoelectric actuators can be used to alleviate gust-response loads is also analyzed qualitatively. Furthermore, through low-speed wind tunnel tests, the effectiveness of the gust load alleviation active control technology is validated. The test results agree well with the numerical results. Test results show that at a certain frequency range, the control scheme can effectively alleviate the z and x wingtip accelerations and the root bending moment of the wing to a certain extent. The control system gives satisfying gust load alleviation efficacy with the reduction rate being generally over 20%.

Mixed H_2/H_∞ Control Using a Fuzzy Singularly Perturbed Model with Multiple Perturbation Parameters for Gust Load Alleviation

This paper presents a mixed H21H∞ control using fuzzy singularly perturbed model （FSPM） with multiple perturbation parameters. Since FSPM with multiple perturbation parameters is an extension of models with a single perturbation parameter, the theoretical results are applicable to a larger class of systems described by multiple time scale nonlinear models, such as flying aircraft and flexible space robots. The parameter-independent solution of the mixed H21H∞ controller was obtained in the form of linear matrix inequalities （LMIs）. The application of this approach to gust load alleviation of a flying vehicle verifies its effectiveness and flexibility.

Integrated fault estimation and fault-tolerant control for a flexible regional aircraft

The article focuses on the design and application of an active reconfigurable controller that mitigates the effects of gust load and actuator faults on a flexible aircraft.A novel integrated adaptive output feedback scheme is investigated to address the actuator faults.The real-time fault values provided by the fault estimation module are considered in the reconfigurable control law to improve the fault-tolerant capability.The estimate values of faults and control gains are calculated by analyzing the stability of the overall system.The proposed controller is simulated using a flexible aircraft model with a discrete‘1-cosine’gust,and the results show that it can effectively mitigate the wing root moments and recover the flight maneuver stability after the aircraft suffered from gusts.