Simple adaptive V-stack piezoelectric based airfoil flutter suppression system

The suppression of aeroelastic vibrations due to flutter using a trailing edge flap is analyzed to increase the speed operability range of wings. The aeroelastic model of a 3DOF airfoil in incompressible flow is presented and an augmented state-space representation is used for the time domain analysis. A finite element model of a V-stack piezoelectric actuator, used to move the trailing edge flap, is introduced to model the actuator dynamics. The use of the simple adaptive controller is investigated to realize an adaptive flutter suppression system. A parallel feedforward compensator is tuned to make the plant almost strictly passive and a metaheuristic algorithm is used to determine the invariant parameters. Numerical simulations are carried out to verify the performance of the simple adaptive flutter suppression system in presence of speed variations and disturbances. Numerical results proved that the SAC flutter suppression system improves the closed loop system flutter boundary with respect to a gain scheduled PID controller.