High-Rate, High-Precision Wing Twist Actuation for Drone, Missile, and Munition Flight Control

Abstract

This paper covers a new actuation and deflection controller configuration for high-aspect-ratio wings used on subsonic drones, missiles, and munitions. Current approaches to the flight control of these aircraft have unearthed challenges with friction, stiction, slop, bandwidth, and thick boundary layer nonlinearities, which degrade flight control accuracy—especially in terminal flight phases. The approach described in this paper uses directionally attached piezoelectric (DAP) actuators to actively twist a high-aspect-ratio wing for flight control. The DAP actuators were modeled analytically and computationally using linear finite element modeling. A 3″ (7.62 cm) chord × 15” (38.1 cm) semispan rectangular wing with an NACA 0012 profile was built and structurally tested, demonstrating excellent agreement between theory and experiment. New actuation methods were used to overdrive the PZT-5H piezoelectric elements deep into the repoling range. This overdrive actuation rejuvenated the actuator elements and allowed for dramatically improved deflections with respect to configurations in previous years. Static testing demonstrated deflections in excess of ±1.6° in root-to-tip twist. Dynamic testing showed corner frequencies greater than 310 Hz. A series of wind tunnel tests at up to 180 ft/s (55 m/s, 123 mph, 107 kts, 198 kph) demonstrated excellent roll control authority, rapid manipulation of Clδ­, and lift manipulation using quasi-static deflections. The paper concludes with a summary of implications for terminal guidance for drone, missile, and munition flight control in real atmospheres.

Understanding and Securing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Services: A Comprehensive Tutorial

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Optimal Voltage Distribution on PZT Actuator Pairs for Vibration Damping in Beams with Different Boundary Conditions

“…However, piezoceramics have been implemented in several applications such as: energy harvesting [6], micro-actuators for subspace aircraft [9], wings actuation in drones [10], vibration damping in cantilever beam under support motion [11], turbomachinery blades vibration [12][13][14][15], axial compressor vibration damping [16], rotating plates vibration control [17], and active fan blades vibration [18,19].…”

Time-harmonic loading over a piezoelectric layered half-space

“…Due to the intrinsic mechanical-electrical coupling effect, piezoelectric (PE) materials stimulate an abundance of interdisciplinary research (Azizi et al, 2016). Developing PE materials with structural systems like advanced composite beams, plates, and shells have enormous applications in emerging fields such as aerospace industries (Gasbarri et al, 2014), military operation (Barrett-Gonzalez and Wolf, 2022), and energy harvesting (Elahi et al, 2019). The designed smart structures include the shape control of large space antennas, active or passive control of vibration (Rao and Sunar, 1994; Yoon and Washington, 1998), miniature positioning devices, for example, micro-robots, medical apparatus, micro-pumps (Muralt et al, 1986), highly efficient micro-machined acoustic devices like microphones and micro speakers (Williams et al, 2012), hearing aids (Zargarpour and Zarifi, 2015), and chemical and biomedical ones (Huang and Lee, 2008; Manbachi and Cobbold, 2011).…”