Motion Synchronous Composite Decoupling with Fewer Sensors on Multichannel Hydraulic Force Control for Aircraft Structural Loading Test System

Abstract

The aircraft full-scale fatigue test is widely used in the modern aircraft industry for the safety of flight. Generally, the aircraft full-scale fatigue test is achieved by structural loading; multiple hydraulic actuators are used to apply load for force control. The fatigue loading test takes approximately several years. A key challenge is how to accelerate the loading frequency to shorten the total test time. Nevertheless, when pluralities of hydraulic actuator simultaneously increase the loading frequency, the mutual coupling force from the low rigidity of the aircraft structure will cause a large loading error, meaning that the test cannot be implemented. Although it is possible to reduce error by adding sensors, the force sensors need to connect several kilometers of cable. This paper proposed a novel motion synchronous composite decoupling control strategy with fewer sensors. The control method compensates the negative coupling effect of the channels by integrating the command signals and feedback signals of all channels. It can suppress coupling force and reduce errors at higher frequencies, thereby shortening the experiment time. Opposed to traditional decoupling control methods, advantages of this strategy are that it only needs force sensors and it does not need additional displacement or velocity and acceleration sensors to collect state variables for building the state space. Furthermore, it has been experimentally verified that the new motion synchronous composite decoupling control method can indeed guarantee sufficient control accuracy when the test frequency is increased. The method has great economic significance for shortening test duration.