ANALYSIS OF AN ELECTROSTRICTIVE STACK ACTUATOR FOR ACTIVE TRAILING EDGE FLAPS

Helicopter is a complex dynamic system withmany rotating components. The rotor blades oper-ate in a highly complex aerodynamic environment.The vibratory hub load,which is caused by cyclicvariation ofcentrifugaland aerodynamic load of therotating bladesin flight,is transmitted to the fuse-lage,resulting in serious vibration and noise of thestructure. It is one of the most important excitingsources in helicopters.There has long been a desire to reduce heli-copter vibration and to improve its per…

ANALYSIS OF AN ELECTROSTRICTIVE STACK ACTUATOR FOR ACTIVE TRAILING EDGE FLAPS

Stack actuator is a solid-state driving component of Active Tailing Edge Flap in smart rotor systems. It is a multi-layer serial structure of basic units composed of electrostrictive and adhesive layers. In this paper, a dynamic model of the actuator is derived based on the constitutive equation of electrostrictive material and the equation of motion. Theoretical analysis is made on the factors involved in the design of the actuator, which reveals that the electrostrictive layer and the adhesive layer should be optimized to compromise between displacement and frequency requirements. In the final part of the paper, the experiment of an ATEF system is introduced. The results show that the model is reasonable. It also suggests that the bending stiffness of elastic mechanism is an important factor in design, which should be carefully studied to provide satisfactory dynamic response of the ATEF system.