Piezoceramic Active Vibration Suppression System B-1B Flight Demonstration
Abstract
Piezoceramic actuators have been utilized in many laboratory tests to provide a means of actively damping structural vibration; but have not, up till now, been applied to a high performance operational aircraft. This paper describes a program which applied a set of actuators (PZTs) to a skin panel on the aft fuselage of the B-1B aircraft. This panel is exposed to very high acoustic excitation during takeoff and to significant oscillating pressures during high speed-low altitude flight. The overall objective of this program was to demonstrate that an active vibration suppression system could reduce the vibration levels of a thick sharply-curved aircraft skin panel with PZT actuators attached only on the inner surface. This goals had to be achieved in a moderate temperature environment, with a digital processing rate of over 8000 Hz, at a low voltage, and with two relatively small hardware packages. Secondary goals included obtaining information on the durability, reliability, weight, and cost of the system. This latter information will be used to determine if the fatigue life of an aircraft type structure can be improved at a reasonable cost which is competitive with a structural beef up. The program was piggy backed on an ongoing B-1B flight test program. This allowed an actual flight test demonstration to be performed with out the costs associated with flight test support and a stand alone instrumentation system. The program was performed in three stages. The first stage included laboratory tests:
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Nov 15, 1998
- Source ID
- 10.1115/imece1998-0949
Entities
People
- Charles R. Larson
- Demetrious G. Zaferis
- Eric Falangas
- Jeffrey G. Nelson
- Joseph S. Rosenthal
- Melvin Weiss
- Ratnakar R. Neurgoankar
- Stephen F. Mcgrath
Organizations
- Boeing
- United States Air Force