Aeroelastic Response of Flapped-Wing Systems Using Robust Estimation Control Methodology

Abstract

This paper concerns the active aeroelastic control of 3-D flap-wing systems exposed to gust and/or sonic boom in an incompressible flow field. This is achieved via implementation of a robust estimation capability (sliding mode observer: SMO), and of the use of the deflected flap as to suppress the flutter instability or enhance the subcritical aeroelastic response to gust or blast loads. To this end, a control methodology using LQG(Linear Quadratic Gaussian) in conjunction with SMO is implemented, and its performance toward suppressing flutter and reducing the vibrational level in the subcritical flight speed range is demonstrated. Moreover, its performances are compared with the ones provided via implementation of conventional LQG with Kalman filter.