Nonlinear Adaptive Actuation of Synthetic Jet Arrays for Aerodynamic Flow Control

Active flow control using synthetic jet actuators has been the subject of significant research in recent years due to its immense potential to expand the operating regimes of traditional aircraft and enable unconventional designs driven by nonaerodynamic operational considerations. Barron Associates, Inc. has teamed with researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Wyoming to propose a research program which, if successful, will significantly advance the current state-of-the-art in active flow control and move this technology towards an ultimate objective of practical flight control via "virtual" control surfaces. Three primary investigations are proposed: (1) a novel concept that has been developed for the arrangement of synthetic jet arrays to facilitate virtual shaping of an airfoil during normal flight conditions will be modeled and analyzed; (2) a practical, implementable adaptive control algorithm based on adaptive inverse techniques that have been proven effective in many previous applications in systems with unknown actuator nonlinearities will be developed and tested; and (3) an adaptive actuator failure compensation scheme will be developed that will optimize the performance of the control system in the presence of unknown actuator failures. A nonlinear tailless aircraft model will serve as the Phase I test platform.