STUDY OF ACTIVE BUFFETING CONTROL METHODS OF FULLY-MOVABLE VERTICAL TAILS

Fully-movable vertical tail structures are different from vertical stabilizer structures with rudders. Three active control methods including piezoelectric control, vertical tail rotation control, and hybrid piezoelectric control and vertical tail rotation control of fully-movable vertical tails are studied. The electrodynamics of macro fiber composite (MFC) actuators are modeled by the load simulation method of using a piezoelectric actuator and the motion-induced aerodynamic forces are calculated by the doublet-lattice method. The control laws of the three models are designed using the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) method. The buffeting responses of the three control models are analyzed, and afterwards the differences and comparisons of the control effect of those models are investigated. The results show that the control effect of the piezoelectric control is limited due to the limitation of the control voltage and the piezoelectric power amplifier. Because the vertical tail's rotation control is subject to its own control frequency, its control effect is not obvious for high-frequency excitation. The hybrid control method combines the advantages of the vertical tail rotation control and the piezoelectric control, by which the energy in low-order and high-order modes are all reduced, thus the scope of control frequency is markedly expanded. Therefore, the control effect of the hybrid control is the best. Finally, numerical examples with different structural parameters for the fully-movable vertical tails verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the hybrid buffeting control method.