Preliminary Research On Smart Structure Used For Active Flow Control On A Wing

Research on active flow control with smart wing is a hot point in the field of piezoelectric smart structure recently. The smart wing is essential because wing is a main factor to the aerodynamic action of an aircraft. The THUNDER smart wing uses a piezoelectric smart structure mounted internally to alter the shape of the suction surface which results in a change in the effective camber by increasing the maximum thickness and moving the location of maximum thickness aft. Since the structure motion can be altered continuously, this allows the wing shape to be either static or dynamic. Smart piezoelectric structure is compact, light-weight, high efficiency and good adaptability. It can provide better performances with high bandwidth and energy densities. The THUNDER smart wing offers the advantages of both turbulence-development restriction and dynamic-stall control. For the static mode, effects of profile perturbations are numerical tested in a wind tunnel to determine the change in wing efficiency due to variations in the camber at low Reynolds number. Various camber thickness are tested from Re = 5.7e5 to Re = 1.71e7 at varying angles of attack from α = 0o to α = 20o. The direct numerical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations is implemented successfully in the THUNDER smart wing flow field based on increment projection FEM using MATLAB. Preliminary designs of active flow control law and comparisons are made with numerical predictions to demonstrate the effect of the THUNDER on flight performance. It is shown that these laws are available and convenient for the active flow control on the THUNDER smart wing and provide the pre-investigation of the active control system design.