Active control of vertical tail buffeting by piezoelectric actuators

A simplified method for analyzing and designing a vertical tail buffeting alleviation system is developed. The vertical tail model in this study is equipped with surface-bonded piezoelectric actuators to suppress the buffeting responses induced by aerodynamic forces. The structural dynamics of the vertical tail and the electrodynamics of piezoelectric actuators are modeled using a finite element method and realized by commercial software packages ANSYS®. Afterward, the finite element model for both the host structure and the piezoelectric patches are imported into MATLAB®, in which the dynamic equations of the system in modal coordinates are obtained through modal truncation. The motion-induced aerodynamic forces are computed by using the doublet-lattice method. The buffet input excitations are simulated by the proper orthogonal decomposition-based method. The suboptimal controller is designed to compute suitable control voltages needed to drive piezoelectric actuators. Finally, the effectiveness of the piezoelectric actuators in reducing vibratory responses due to buffet loads on the vertical tail is investigated numerically. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is feasible and effective.