An Application of Smart-Structure Technology to Rotor Blade Tip Vibration Control

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental development of a simple and effective vibration control scheme by employing smart-structure technology Due to high accuracy and high slew rate requirements for lightweight structures, vibration control becomes a challenging task. In this paper, it is proposed to ac tively control rotor blade tip vibration with collocated piezoceramic sensors and actuators. To include the flexible characteristics of rotor blades in the analysis, a flexible cantilever beam is used to simulate the dy namic behavior of the blade subjected to external disturbances, generated by a magnetic shaker. The shaker was installed near the tip of the simulated rotor blade to maximize the external excitations. PZT4 piezoce ramic sensor and actuator were used and considered as elements of the smart structure. Based on the derived dynamic model, a proportional gain feedback controller was implemented to compensate for the vibratory de flections of the underlying structure. The results of the work show that the proposed control methodology along with the smart structure can suppress 85% of the measured structural vibration, which is considered satisfactory.