A Survey of Subscale Aircraft Primary Flight Control Actuator Dynamic Response Characteristics

Abstract

This paper is intended to act as a reference document for subscale aircraft and aerospace system designers who are laying out primary flight control devices. Although a great deal of information exists on actuator deflections, moments, relatively little data is publicly available on actuator dynamics. Because aircraft dimensions and weights are growing ever smaller, aeromechanical modes are growing higher and higher in frequency. As a result, it is imperative that flight control actuators with high enough bandwidths to control these aircraft be specifid, modeled, integrated and flown. The paper begins with a brief overview of seveal major flight control actuator classes which are suitable for subscale aircraft flight control and a fundamental history of each. Following the historical overview, a survey of i.) conventional electromagnetic servoactuators, ii.) pieoelectric and iii.) pneumatic subscale flight control actuators are made. The study concludes with a side-by-side comparison of the dynamics of subscale flight control actuators with corner frequencies ranging from 0.5 to 460 Hz.

High Speed Microactuators for Low Aspect Ratio High Speed Micro Aircraft Surfaces

“…By examining the actuator data of [2] and in Figure 1, one observes the genesis of a nontrivial problem: to control subscale aircraft moving at high speeds and suppress natural aeromechanical modes, the flight control actuators must be very fast, certainly faster than those used by model airplanes as seen in Figure 2. It is also interesting to note that, from Figure 3, the excitation frequencies of atmospherics where many subscale aircraft are expected to fly are precisely matching short period modes.…”