Aeroservoelastic Wind Tunnel Evaluation of H∞ Active Flutter Suppression

It is often imperative to test and validate the development of active flutter suppression technology in wind tunnels or in flight near and beyond the flutter speed. This is done not only to fine-tune mathematical models but also to examine the active control laws that were synthesized from such models. However, in-flight flutter tests are often dangerous, costly, and sometimes infeasible. Wind tunnel tests are usually more affordable and less risky, leading to higher productivity in evaluating alternative configurations and control law strategies. The University of Washington’s MARGE-I aeroservoelastic wind tunnel model is a flexible half-wing–body–tail model with active ailerons and an elevator. The work here studies SISO mixed-sensitivity [Formula: see text] control for active flutter suppression, which is designed subject to requirements and hardware constraints. Such a controller is validated by wind tunnel tests, where the closed-loop margins in both simulation and experiments are quantified and compared. A previously published safe wind tunnel and flight test technique is used to generate flutter mechanisms. The set of control surfaces is partitioned into destabilizing and stabilizing ones, where a destabilizing controller reshapes the aeroservoelastic system to yield the desired unstable dynamic characteristics, and the stabilizing controller is used to study active flutter control strategies.