Adaptive control of an aeroelastic flight vehicle using piezoelectric actuators

The paper studies the feasibility of applying piezoelectric actuators to suppress aeroelastic vibrations in a flexible aircraft so that the aeroelastic response can be tailored to comply with specified dynamic performance characteristics. To that end, an adaptive aeroelastic flight vehicle demonstrator concept was designed, developed, manufactured and tested. Closed-loop buffet attenuation, gust response alleviation and flutter suppression results are presented. The performance of the active aeroelastic control approach using piezoelectric actuators is compared to the performance of the aerodynamic control surfaces. Issues related to instrumentation for flight testing are presented as well.