ACTIVE AEROELASTIC CONTROL OF VARIABLE CAMBER AIRFOIL IN THE PRESENCE OF STRUCTURAL NON-LINEARITIES

摘要

Modern smart materials technologies have led to the idea of aircraft that may actively change their shape to maneuver or to control aeroelastic response. In this context, it is reasonable to consider that nonlinear aeroelastic behavior represents an important issue. If an aircraft structure presents mildly or severe non-linear behavior, the active aeroelastic control by means of changing aircraft shape can represent a great challenge. This work presents an investigation on active control of aeroelastic response using variable camber airfoils. Fuzzy aeroelastic control law modeling, where non-linear structural behavior is considered, has been aimed. Distributed lumped vortex method has been used to determine unsteady aerodynamic responses and typical structural non-linearities have been also adopted for the aeroelastic simulation. Active camber variation is achieved by means of time-varying polynomial description of the airfoil camber line. The results show a robust and acceptable methodology to threat aeroelastic response control of variable shape aerodynamic structures.