Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of Hysteresis in Piezocomposite Airfoils Using Preisach Model

Abstract

DOI: 10.2514/1.C031374 In this paper, the classical (scalar) Preisach model is used to predict hysteresis observed in several Macro-Fiber Composite actuated piezocomposite bimorph devices: 1) two cantilevered beams, 2) a simply supported thin airfoil, and3)acascadingbimorphthickairfoil.Thispapercontributestotheresearch fieldbyexaminingtheeffectivenessof the scalar Preisach model for operational and wind-tunnel tested piezocomposite airfoils in the presence of aerodynamic and inertial loading and subjected to two different electrical boundary conditions. A low-speed opencircuitwindtunnelisusedforexperimentalanalysis.The flowspeedisusedasaparametertounderstandtheeffectof nonuniform aerodynamic loading on the accuracy of the model. In addition, the excitation frequency is used as a parameter to understand the effect of inertial (mass) loading. It was observed that the aerodynamic loading, up to 19 m=s, has a negligible effect on the aerodynamic output of the airfoils considered in this research. The classical Preisachmodeliscapableofpredictingthehysteresisobservedinallofthesamplestestedwithanaverageprediction error less than 6.8% for a 0.5 Hz input signal and less than 9.3% for a 1 Hz input signal. The increasing–decreasing and decreasing–increasing first-order transition curves are both found to be equally successful in developing the Preisach model for all samples.