ProjectNumberPS1.1bActiveTiltrotorAeroelasticand.pptVIP

Project Number : PS 1.1b Active Tiltrotor Aeroelastic and Aeromechanical Stability Augmentation PI: Dr. Farhan Gandhi Phone: (814) 865-1164 E-mail: fgandhi@psu.edu Graduate Student Researchers: Rupinder Singh (funded by NRTC) Eric Hathaway (Boeing Philadelphia) 2005 Penn State RCOE Program Review May 3, 2004;Background Tiltrotors susceptible to whirl flutter instability at high forward speeds Alleviating whirl flutter allows higher cruise speeds and/or reduced structural weight (greater payload/range) Proposed soft-inplane tiltrotor configurations vulnerable to aeromechanical instabilities (ground/air resonance) Passive design techniques which improve soft-inplane aeromechanical stability have been reported to reduce whirl flutter stability Technical Barriers / Physical Mechanisms to Solve Ground Resonance characteristics of soft-inplane tiltrotors not been fully explored Modern Adaptive Controllers may be capable of providing the required stability augmentation, complexity of these systems not attractive for production Simpler controllers may have lower benefits, may not be sufficiently robust Which actuation mechanism to use? ;Overall Objectives Evaluate effectiveness of active control in improving the damping of critical modes in various flight regimes, including: High-speed (whirl flutter) Low- to moderate-speed (air resonance) Ground contact and Hover (ground/air resonance) Increasing speed, reducing weight, allowing for soft-inplane designs Approaches Develop, validate simple tiltrotor stability analysis, suitable for closed-loop control Extend analysis for active control via wing-mounted trailing edge flap and swashplate Verify active control results with available experimental data Examine the effectiveness of active control for improving tiltrotor whirl flutter/ aeromechanical stability, considering both swashplate/wing-flaperon actuation Compare performance of simple controllers to full-state LQR control, evaluate robustness and performance ;Current Mot