Flutter suppression of a bridge section model endowed with actively controlled flap arrays

In this work, we investigate active flutter control of a bridge section model equipped with arrays of flaps. We consider three simple control algorithms based on an amplitude-gain and a phase-shift for actuating the flaps and stabilizing the section model. We have leveraged a linear analytical model of the structural and aeroelastic forces during flutter in order to find efficient control parameters. The proposed solution was validated with wind tunnel experiments, where all the algorithms showed capable of suppressing flutter, and the most efficient one was using all of the flaps on the deck.