Active control of aeroelastic oscillations of a cantilever structure using piezoelectric strips

Recently, active control of aeroelastic oscillations and the use of piezoelectric materials in vibration analysis and control of structures have been the subjects of many researches in air vehicle design. The present paper deals with the use of bonded piezoelectric sensors and actuators in control of aeroelastic oscillations of a cantilever plate under the effects of unsteady subsonic aerodynamic loading. The aerodynamic loading is calculated using a numerical panel method. The structural model of the plate undergoing small transverse oscillations is modeled using finite element formulation. The aerodynamic and structural models are coupled through an interactive computer model to transfer the data simultaneously and an active feedback control is applied to suppress the oscillations. A systematic method is also presented to obtain the gains of the feedback controller. The numerical results show that the controller can effectively reduce the amplitude of the oscillations in small amount of time and with small gains, hence lower cost.