Active control and wind tunnel test verification of multi-control surfaces wing for gust alleviation

Based on a wind tunnel model of a high aspect ratio elastic wing which has multi-control surfaces, frequency-domain and time-domain approaches to gust response analysis and gust response alleviation control law design are presented. The control laws are designed using classical control theory. The control surfaces, which are located at 0.6 and 0.8 of the wingspan, are manipulated to reduce the wing-tip acceleration (WTA) excited by "sine" gust. Numerical analysis and test results on the low frequency show that gust alleviation using multi-control surfaces is better than that of single control surface. When the air speed is 14 m/s and the gust frequency ranges from 2-5 Hz, the WTA using multi-control surfaces is alleviated by 10%-24%. When the air speed ranges from 8-16 m/s, the WTA in close-loop is alleviated by 10%-40% for the "sine" gust whose frequency is 2 Hz. The error between the finite element model and the reality model brings on the error between the results obtained by theory and test. This article are of reference value to extend gust alleviation technique to engineering application.