Transonic flutter suppression for a three-dimensional elastic wing via active disturbance rejection control

Abstract The paper presents an error-based active control law for the transonic flutter suppression of a three dimensional elastic wing in a wide range of Mach numbers and dynamic pressures. The extended state observer is the key issue for the presented controller and provides the observed output signal and the observed total disturbance signal at the same time. The observed output signal obtained via the extended state observer enables one to design a feedback control law for adjusting the output errors, while the observed total disturbance signal linearizes the controlled system and guarantees the anti-interference of the proposed controller. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed controller system for transonic flutter suppression, the transonic aeroservoelastic behaviors of a three-dimensional elastic wing with both leading-edge and trailing-edge control surfaces are illustrated as the test cases. During the numerical simulations, only the tailing-edge control surface is used as the control input and the leading-edge control surface is fixed. The numerical results show that the active control law can effectively suppress the transonic flutter at a wide range of Mach numbers and dynamic pressures. Moreover, the controller system has robustness with respect to certain measurement noises and time delay.