Aerodynamic analysis and elastic suppression of refueling boom

Abstract

This paper studies on the refueling boom aerodynamic characteristics and proposes an elastic suppression method for the refueling boom with the property of large length-diameter ratio. In order to obtain the accurate frequency response, modal analysis for the refueling boom is conducted based on ANSYS MODAL. Then the dynamics and kinematic equations of the elastic refueling boom are deduced, which contain the frequency parameter. To complete the equations, the aerodynamic performance is solved in ANSYS FLUENT. In addition, based on the mixed H2 / H∞ theory, an optimal PID controller is proposed to suppress the elastic deformation. Furthermore, the parameters of the PID controller are optimized with the differential evolution algorithm. Simulation shows that the different elastic mode has different effect on the control of the refueling boom. The elastic deformation is suppressed obviously for each mode.

Keywords

• refueling boom;
• aerodynamic analysis;
• modal analysis;
• elastic suppression;
• mixed optimal PID controller