Robust aeroelastic control of a thin-walled wing structure with model uncertainty

The robust vibration control and dynamic response analysis of an advanced aircraft wing structure are addressed in this paper. The wing structure is modeled as a thin-walled beam with fiber-reinforced composite materials featuring a circumferentially asymmetric stiffness (CAS) configuration that completely splits into two coupled groups of motion. The time-dependent external loads are considered with unsteady aerodynamics in an incompressible flow field. To demonstrate the robust characteristics of the sliding mode methods, both the conventional linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) regulator and the proposed method are compared with respect to model uncertainty and external excitation. The numerical results demonstrate that the sliding mode control (SMC) on the basis of the sliding mode observer (SMO) is an efficient way to control the unstable dynamic response subjected to various external loads associated with model uncertainty.