Vibration mitigation of a model aircraft with high-aspect-ratio wings using two-dimensional nonlinear vibration absorbers

Abstract

High-aspect-ratio (HAR) airplane wings have higher energy efficiency and present an economical alternative to standard airplane wings. HAR wings have a high span and a high lift-to-drag ratio, allowing the wing to require less thrust during flight. However, due to their length and construction, HAR wings exhibit low-frequency, high-amplitude vibrations in both vertical (yaw axis) and longitudinal (roll axis) directions. To combat these unwanted vibrations, a two-dimensional nonlinear vibration absorber (2D-NVA) is constructed and attached to a model HAR-wing airplane to verify its effectiveness at reducing vibrational motion. The 2D-NVA design, which was presented in a previous study, consists of two low-mass, rigid bodies namely the housing and the impactor. The housing consists of a ring-like rigid body in the shape of an ellipse, while the impactor is a solid cylindrical mass which resides inside the cavity of the housing. The 2D-NVA is designed such that the impactor can contact the inner surface of the housing under both impacts and constrained sliding motion. The present study focuses on the use of the 2D-NVA to mitigate multiple modes of vibration excited by impulsive loading of a model airplane with HAR wings in both vertical and longitudinal directions. The effectiveness of a single 2D-NVA is investigated computationally using a finite element model of the model airplane. These results are verified experimentally and the performance of two 2D-NVAs (one on each wing) is also investigated. The contributions of this work are that: 1) the 2D-NVA alters the global response of the model aircraft by mitigating all relevant modes in both directions simultaneously; 2) a single 2D-NVA is optimal for mitigating motion in the vertical direction, while two active 2D-NVAs are optimal for the longitudinal direction; and 3) the performance of the 2D-NVA is robust to changes in the frequency content of the parent structure.