Changing the shape of an airfoil to enhance overall aircraft performance has always been a goal of aircraft designers. Using smart material to reshape the wing can improve aerodynamic performance. The influence of anisotropic effects of piezoelectric actuators on the aerodynamic characteristics of a simplified HALE wing model was investigated. Test verification was conducted.
The application of actuator made of piezoelectric material,particularly the advanced piezoelectric fiber composite due to the rapid development of smart materials and structures and active control technology in aviation and aerospace industry,to aircraft for performance enhancements such as flight control,aerodynamic force optimization,structure weight reduction,and overall aircraft design represents a new challenge to researches.It is considered as one of the key technologies for developing future flight vehicle.An approach with virtual control surface instead of conventional control surface to control aerodynamic force distribution and flight performance by use of piezoelectric fiber composite actuators distributed on wing surface is presented here.Particularly,the design and implementation of increasing lift force,providing roll maneuver,decreasing induced drag and wing root moment in different flight environments by the same structure control platform are studied.The control effect and sensitivity are examined quantitatively.Generally speaking,better control effect can be obtained by making better use of aeroelastic character to enlarge the actuation strain produced by piezoelectric material.
The slender axis-symmetric submarine body moving in the vertical plane is the object of our investigation.A coupling model is developed where displacements of a solid body as a Euler beam(consisting of rigid motions and elastic deformations) and fluid pressures are employed as basic independent variables,including the interaction between hydrodynamic forces and structure dynamic forces.Firstly the hydrodynamic forces,depending on and conversely influencing body motions,are taken into account as the governing equations.The expressions of fluid pressure are derived based on the potential theory.The characteristics of fluid pressure,including its components,distribution and effect on structure dynamics,are analyzed.Then the coupling model is solved numerically by means of a finite element method(FEM).This avoids the complicacy,combining CFD(fluid) and FEM(structure),of direct numerical simulation,and allows the body with a non-strict ideal shape so as to be more suitable for practical engineering.An illustrative example is given in which the hydroelastic dynamic characteristics,natural frequencies and modes of a submarine body are analyzed and compared with experimental results.Satisfactory agreement is observed and the model presented in this paper is shown to be valid.
