Semi-Active Vibration Control of Aircraft Structures

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-1736.vid This paper presents work conducted in the TAVAC project, regarding the control of vibrations in regional aircraft structures caused by low frequency unsteady aerodynamic loads. A Semi-Active Tuned Mass Damper is investigated, consisting of a piezoelectric device connected to an external RL electrical circuit. The piezoelectric device provides the stiffness for the resonant oscillator and at the same time converts kinetic energy, transmitted from the primary structure to the resonant mass, to electrical, which is subsequently dissipated into the circuit. The electromechanical coupling and vibration reduction capabilities of the proposed damper are initially analytically and experimentally investigated on a simplified experiment with 3 Degrees of Freedom including the displacements of the primary and the auxiliary masses and the electric current through the shunt circuit. Subsequently, the shunted piezoelectric Tuned Mass Damper is analytically and experimentally evaluated on a lab-scaled aircraft prototype. The experimental measurements of both laboratory tests greatly agree with the numerical results, validating the enhanced vibration suppression capabilities of the electromechanical damper, compared to the purely mechanical case. Moreover, the variation of inductive impedance demonstrates great semi-active vibration control capabilities: either to retune the damper performance in the case of changing the system dynamic characteristics; or by drastically altering the electrical circuit resonance to attain substantial broadband multimodal vibration suppression.