Helicopter Rotor Blade Vibration Control on the Basis of Active/Passive Piezoelectric Damping Approach
Sergey Shevtsov, Arcady Soloviev, Vladimir Acopyan, Ivan Samochenko
The presented article considers some aspects of active vibration control for rotorcraft application. Its main goal is a comparative analysis of efficiency of the helicopter rotor blades aeroelastic vibrations suppression by active (controlled) and passive (shunted by electric circuit) piezoelectric patches. The necessity of the passive scheme use is given by difficulties of transmission through the rotated rotor hub the number of signals from strain sensors and high-voltage signals from piezodrivers, operating power piezoelectric actuators, and, hence, by necessity of decreasing of a distributed control channels. For obtaining the qualitative assessment information about influence of the external load circuit parameters to behavior of cinematically excited actuator piezoelectric patch the preliminary harmonic analysis in the frameworks of 1D elasticity / electro-elasticity for R, L, C and combined RLC type of a load in a long-wave approximation is performed. For PZT-5H piezoelectric plate working in d31-mode the dependence of oscillations energy damping and change of elastic properties from actuator’s plate geometrical and material parameters, and exterior load were founded. It is shown that for reasonable values of capacity, inductance and load resistance the effective suppression of oscillations energy is marked at frequencies range greater than 1 kHz only. These results were confirmed by finite-element non-stationary analysis of a force excited model composite tube with embedded piezoelectric patches. As main result of our activity the hybrid architecture of activation system with piezoelectric patches actuators was proposed. In this system the vibration suppression on the first’s flexural modes is yielded with use of power PD-controllers, and oscillation damping on the torsional and higher flexural modes – by piezoelectric patches loaded on a tuned RC circuits. Efficiency of the offered system are illustrated by results of the transient analysis of the finite-element model and by experimental data obtained on a scaled model of the helicopter composite rotor blade with embedded flexural and torsional – operated piezoelectric actuators.