Design And Analysis Of The Resonant Actuator System Of Rotor Blade With Trailing Edge Flap

Because of their electro-mechanical coupling characteristics, piezoelectric materials have beenexplored extensively for various engineering applications, such as helicopter vibration reduction.Piezoelectric actuation systems are expected to be compact, light weight, low actuation power, andhigh bandwidth devices that can be used to suppress vibration and noise, and increase aeromechanicalstability. On the other hand, while piezoelectric material-based actuators have shown good potential,they can only provide very limited strain. The efforts to improve the piezoelectric actuatorperformance have been made by researchers in developing amplification mechanisms of various types,these devices are still limited in their performance.The goal of this paper is to develop a new method,which is the resonant actuation concept fortrailing edge flap, for actuation authority enhancement to circumvent the aforementioned limitationsof piezoelectric actuators. Based on the classic actuator and a active-passive hybrid shunt network, themathematics model of the resonant actuation is built up, and mechanical tuning and electrical tailoringmethods are developed. With mechanical tuning, the resonant frequencies of the actuation system canbe adjusted to the required actuation frequencies. This obviously will increase the authority of theactuation system. To further enhance controllability and robustness, the actuation resonant peak canbe significantly broadened and flattened with electrical tailoring through the aid of an electric networkof inductance, resistance, and negative capacitance.The optimal values of the electrical components are explicitly determined. Design guidelines forthe RAS circuitry are provided based on the nondimensionalized formulae. To provide better physicalunderstanding, the RAS is compared to an equivalent mechanical system and an equivalent electriccircuit model emulating the physical actuation system is derived based on the Butterworth Van Dykemodel.The mechanical and electrical domain model studies show that the resonant actuation system,which can indeed achieve both high active authority and robustness and only needs very low powerconsumption, is effective and provides a theoretical guideline for the future design and experiment.