Study of airfoil gust response alleviation using an electro-magnetic dry friction damper. Part 2: Experiment

In Part 1 of this work, a theoretical simulation study of the non-linear gust response of a three degree-of-freedom typical airfoil section with a control surface using an electro-magnetic dry friction damper is presented. For validation of this theoretical model, an electro-magnetic dry friction damper has been designed and an experimental investigation of the gust response has been carried out in a wind tunnel. Results for both periodic and linear frequency sweep gust excitations have been computed and measured. The fair to good quantitative agreement between theory and experiment verifies that the present electro-magnetic dry friction damper can be used to alleviate the gust response, especially for the plunge and pitch responses. It also shows that the present theoretical method can be successfully applied to determine the non-linear gust response when an electro-magnetic dry friction damper is used in the linear aeroelastic system.