Active Feedback Controller Design for a Thin Airfoil

In this paper we study the problem of active feedback controller design for a thin airfoil, whose mathematical model is derived from classical Theodorsen´s formulation. A finite dimensional controller stabilizing the original infinite dimensional model is obtained using H^¿ control techniques. We also consider the gust alleviation problem, and show that it can be formulated as a disturbance attenuation problem in the mixed H²/H^¿ control framework. We use existing results on H^¿ and mixed H²/H^¿ control to illustrate our approach with a numerical example.