Transportation
Wing Flutter Control
Orbital Research Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio has developed a software program
that "thinks" change. By way of Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) contracts from Langley Research Center, an Orbital Research Intelligent
Control Algorithm™ (ORICA™, rhymes with "eureka") has
been developed. It is the first practical hardware-independent adaptive
and predictive control structure, specifically suited for optimal control
of complex, time-varying systems.
| Wind tunnel testing of ORICA intelligent
control software has shown it to be highly responsive in damping out wing
flutter. Application to commercial aircraft could result in safer and more
cost-effective jet travel. |
Orbital Research has applied ORICA technology to the problem of controlling
aircraft wing flutter, movement that is akin to a shimmy in an automobile.
The effectiveness of the control software has been validated during wind
tunnel testing at Langley. In related work, Orbital Research and NASA's
Lewis Research Center have determined that the company's controller could
be coupled with Lewis' high speed valve technology to improve aircraft
performance.
The company's technology, coupled with NASA expertise, has the possibility
of making jet travel safer, more cost effective by extending distance range,
and lowering overall aircraft operating costs.
There are three main components to ORICA. At its heart is an Identifier
Module which estimates a mathematical model of the system that is being
controlled. The model, which is re-identified at every time step, relates
the effect of each actuator input to the output of the system. The mathematical
model estimated by the Identifier Module is then used by the Predictor
Module to predict the future condition of the system to be controlled.
Finally, the Controller Module uses the estimated future response of the
system developed by the Predictor to calculate the actuator's optimal position
to meet the desired response.
To a pilot, large changes in control before action takes place, could
mean the difference between life and death. The ORICA controller doesn't
wait to take action. Rather, the intelligent software program anticipates
and makes adjustments beforehand. As shown in Langley wind tunnel testing,
the ORICA can control a small flap on a wing, nullifying flutter by regulating
the flap's angle as many as 500 times per second.
Because of its computational efficiency, the superior performance of
ORICA was achieved by employing a personal computer platform (Intel®
Pentium®) as opposed to more expensive hardware commonly tasked for
these high speed flutter suppression tests. ORICA's special algorithms
require only one percent of the computations of other more expensive and
complex academic controllers.
One of ORICA's first applications was in suppression of flutter of a
wing subjected to speeds up to Mach 0.95 at Langley's Transonic Dynamics
Tunnel. ORICA successfully reduced vibrations on the wing by an order of
magnitude over a standard fixed gain controller.
The commercially available ORICA software is not strictly for use on
aircraft. Future application areas for ORICA include control of robots,
power trains, systems with arrays of sensors, or regulating chemical plants
or electrical power plant control.
™ Orbital Research Intelligent Control Algorithm and ORICA are
trademarks of Orbital Research Inc.
® Intel and Pentium
are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.
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