Date of Award
Spring 1999
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Program/Concentration
Aerospace Engineering
Committee Director
Chuh Mei
Committee Member
Donald Kunz
Committee Member
Robert Bennett
Committee Member
Raymond Kvaternik
Call Number for Print
Special Collections; LD4331.E535 M33
Abstract
Several analytical and experimental studies clearly demonstrate that piezoelectric materials (piezoelectrics) can be used as actuators to actively control vibratory response including aeroelastic response. However, two important issues in using piezoelectrics as actuators for active control are: 1) the potentially large amount of power required to operate the actuators, and 2) the complexities involved with active control (added hardware, control law design and implementation). Active or passive damping augmentation using shunted piezoelectrics may provide a viable alternative. This approach requires only simple electrical circuitry and very little or no electrical power. Shunted piezoelectrics have been shown to provide an efficient and effective means of damping the vibratory response of structures and may be used on structures such as flexible wings. The current study examines the feasibility of using shunted piezoelectrics to reduce aeroelastic response using a simple two degree-of-freedom aeroelastic model. The aeroelastic analysis uses Theodorsen aerodynamics (unsteady, strip theory) and the properties of a typical wing section with pitch and plunge degrees of freedom. The shunted piezoelectrics were modeled as damped vibration absorbers applied at the elastic axis. Derivation of the equations of motion for shunted piezoelectrics from constitutive relations shows that using the mechanical analogy of a damped vibration absorber to model the shunted piezoelectrics is sufficient for prefatory analysis. For this study, the piezoelectrics were shunted using a resistor and inductor connected in parallel with the piezoelectric (which acts as a capacitor). The parallel arrangement of the piezoelectric (capacitor), resistor, and inductor simplifies tuning of the shunt circuitry to obtain optimum reduction in the response of the host structure. For an optimally-tuned shunted piezoelectric (shunted using a parallel resistor and inductor) applied to a typical section, the aeroelastic analysis shows that shunted piezoelectrics may provide a simple, low-power method to reduce aeroelastic response.
Rights
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DOI
10.25777/ksna-1h02
Recommended Citation
McGowan, Anna-Maria R..
"Aeroelastic Load Alleviation Using Shunted Piezolectrics"
(1999). Master of Science (MS), Thesis, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/ksna-1h02
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/mae_etds/605