Active vibration control applications for adaptive aircraft wings modelled as thin-walled composite beams

In this study the closed-loop vibrational behavior of aircraft wing is investigated. The wing is modeled as an adaptive thin-walled composite beam with a kite type cross section. Several non-classical effects inherently exist in this beam model resulting from thin-walled beam theory such as material anisotropy, transverse shear deformation and warping restraint. In this case, anti-symmetric lay-up configuration i.e. Circumferentially Uniform Stiffness (CUS) is employed to form transverse-lateral bending and transverse shear coupled motion from amongst numerous other elastic couplings due to directionality property of thin-walled composite beams. Adaptive materials chosen as piezoelectric ceramics are used to achieve active vibration control and inserted into structures as layers. They are located symmetrically in host structure and spread over the entire beam span. As a result, a boundary moment is induced at the beam tip and in this case, the control is achieved via the boundary moment feedback control, yielding an adaptive change in the dynamical characteristics of the beam. Three different control applications are implemented namely proportional and velocity feedback and optimal control and the effect of slenderness ratio on the fundamental frequencies are investigated, enhanced and discussed.