Active Vibration Damping Using Rotor Torque Control in Electric Aircraft

Vibration damping in aerospace structures can decrease the likelihood of failures and instabilities and improve passenger comfort. This paper introduces the novel idea of damping vibration using the electric proprotors on aircraft without compromising flight control. The equations of motion of a cantilevered beam with a propeller at the tip driven by an electric motor are obtained using Hamilton’s principle, solved analytically in the frequency domain, and approximately in the time domain. Feeding back the beam tip angular rate to the motor torque is shown to asymptotically stabilize all transverse beam vibration modes. The overall vibration control consists of the inner rate feedback damping loop with an outer rotor speed control loop. Experimental frequency response and step response validate the models and show that the closed-loop damping in the first mode is three times higher than open loop with less than 1% rotor speed change for a 3% initial tip displacement. Theoretical results give good agreement with experiments. Parametric studies based on a 12 kg quadcopter indicate that if the rotor inertia is sufficiently large the proposed control can provide 8% damping with minimal impact on rotor speed.