Abstract
In recent years, a special attention is given to the research on the dynamics and control of a flexible aircraft. However, dynamic models, especially control of the flexible aircraft, remains to be one of the most challenging problems in engineering. This is mostly due to the fact that the types of actuators used to control aircraft are limited to the control surfaces and engine thrust. In addition to these actuators, piezo-electric actuators can perhaps be used for control purposes. In fact, smart materials are good candidates for the vibration control due to their light weights, deforming controllability and ease in implementation. In an earlier paper, Tuzcu and Meirovitch have applied the idea of employing the smart materials to reduce a flexible aircraft’s bending displacements. The perturbation approach is applied to control both rigid and perturbed system on a flexible aircraft. The purpose of the study is to efficiently control not only the rigid but also perturbed system using distributed piezoelectric actuators. Ability of controlling the perturbed system helps us to predict the aircraft’s or vehicles’ stability in certain conditions. However, the authors only developed the control system for the bending vibrations. In this paper, we will extend the study and use the same approach to develop a control system for not only bending but also torsional displacement in addition to executing smart material actuators on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).