Date of Award

Spring 5-2016

Access Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Vladimir V. Golubev

First Committee Member

R.R. Mankbadi

Second Committee Member

Yan Tang

Third Committee Member

Snorri Gudmurdsson

Fourth Committee Member

William MacKunis

Abstract

An experimental study on the development and implementation of Synthetic Jet Actuators (SJAs) is conducted for eliminating aeroelastic phenomenon such as Limit Cycle Oscillations (LCO). One of the biggest challenges involved in the design of UAVs operating in unsteady atmosphere conditions is the susceptibility of the airframe to aeroelastic instabilities, such as flutter or LCO. Suppression of such instabilities can be achieved through the implementation of Active Flow Control (AFC) techniques, however to this day, a limited amount of experimental studies exist. Thus, the focus of this work is to develop a new AFC method consisting of an actuator that is directly instrumented in the internal volume of the airfoil. Due to the complex geometry of airfoil/actuator integration, advanced manufacturing technique has been employed for rapid manufacturing of these complex parts. In addition, a newly designed experimental test facility is fabricated to study the effect of the developed actuator on aerodynamic performance. Parametric analysis are conducted to investigate the effect of actuator along the airfoil surface, Reynolds number, and angle of attack. Results of this study demonstrated the actuator effectiveness on overall aerodynamic performance and show consistent trends with high-order Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

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