Modeling and Control of Flexible Wing with Trailing and Leading Edge Control Surfaces

This paper investigates the problem of active flutter suppression for a one-dimensional two degrees of freedom airfoil with leading and trailing edge flap control. The goal is to design an active flaps control capability to suppress the flutter instability and enhance the sub critical aero elastic response to time-dependent external pulses. A new interpretation for the modeling of the airfoil is given which takes into account for the parametric model uncertainties on the dynamic pressure, stiffness and damping. To this end, a model mathematic was developed for a typical flexible airfoil with trailing and leading edge control surfaces and a combined LQR and PRLQR control law is designed and its performances toward suppressing flutter and reducing the vibrational level in the sub critical flight. The time domain simulation is used for the control of pitch and plunge motion.