Control law synthesis and sensor design for active flutter suppression.

Abstract

Methods are presented for representing unsteady aerodynamic loadings, valid for arbitrary motion, for the two-dimensional typical section with a trailing-edge control surface in incompressible flow and a three-dimensional lifting surface with leading- or trailing-edge control surfaces in subsonic compressible flow. Loads for the two-dimensional incompressible case are obtained via analytic continuation of the Theodorsen function into the complex plane, with guidance from a time-domain approximation of the Wagner indicial function. For the three-dimensional case, it is proposed that oscillatory generalized aerodynamic forces be approximated by Pade fractions, thereby permitting an obvious continuation into the complex plane. A theoretical justification for this procedure is briefly outlined, and some practical aspects of its implementation are discussed.