Active Vibration and Noise Alleviation in Rotorcraft Using Microflaps.

This work presents a comprehensive analysis of active Gurney flaps, or microflaps, for on blade control of noise and vibration in rotorcraft. The initial portion of the work considered the two-dimensional unsteady aerodynamic characteristics of three different oscillating microflap configurations using a compressible computational fluid dynamics (CFD) flow solver. Among these the configuration most suitable for rotorcraft applications was chosen. An unsteady reduced order aerodynamic model (ROM) was developed for the microflap using the Rational Function Approximation approach and CFD based oscillatory aerodynamic load data. The resulting ROM is a state-space, time-domain model that accounts for unsteadiness, compressibility and time-varying freestream effects. The ROM was validated against direct CFD calculations for a wide range of flow conditions showing excellent agreement. Subsequently, the ROM was then incorporated into a comprehensive rotorcraft simulation code featuring a free-wake model, an acoustic prediction tool, and fully coupled flap-lag-torsional blade dynamics. The higher harmonic control (HHC) algorithm was used to simulate closed-loop active control with a 1.5% chord microflap on a hingeless rotor configuration resembling the MBB BO-105. Three spanwise configurations, single, dual, and a five-microflap configuration were considered. Results indicate that the microflap can achieve reductions ranging from 3-6 dB in the blade-vortex interaction (BVI) noise. Vibration reduction ranging from 70-90% was also demonstrated at both low-speed and high-speed flight conditions. It was also found that reduction in BVI noise results in an increase in vibrations and vice versa, a trend also noted in previous active control studies. Next, simultaneous BVI noise and vibration reduction was studied. A reduction of 2-3 dB in the advancing and retreating side noise combined with a 55% reduction in the vibratory loads was achieved using the five-microflap configuration. The 1.5% chord microflap was also compared to a 20% chord plain trailingedge flap showing similar effectiveness in reducing vibration and noise. Finally, a new approach for dealing with actuator saturation in the HHC algorithm was developed using nonlinear constrained optimization techniques. The optimization approach takes less computational time compared to the previous approaches while yielding better performance in the case of multiple control surfaces.Ph.D.Aerospace EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89750/1/akpadthe_1.pd