Active Flutter Control of a Swept Wing with an Engine by using Piezoelectric Actuators

In this paper, active flutter control of a swept wing with an engine is carried out. The aircraft wing is considered as a uniform swept cantilever beam carrying an engine. The piezoelectric layers are attached to the wing to control the vibrations. To simulate aerodynamic loads, the Theodorsen model is used. The equations of motion are determined via Hamilton’s variational principle and are transformed to a set of ordinary differential equations through the assumed mode method. Lyapunov controller is used to control the system. Effects of design parameters like engine trust, location and mass and wing sweep angle, are evaluated on the flutter speed, and the control system has been applied at the flutter situation. Results show that the control system can substantially suppress the vibration in investigated cases. According to the results, the length of the piezoelectric layers affects the speed of the flutter and the flutter speed increases by increasing the length of these layers. Also, according to the influence of the Lyapunov gains on the performance of the system, it is necessary to select these values carefully to control system has the best performance for the different values of the system parameters.