Title: Review of algorithms and comparative study of controllers for damping the aircraft aeroelastic vibrations

Authors: Sheharyar Malik; Gorkem Yalin; Munir Elfarra; Y.K. Hassan

Addresses: Department of Aircraft Engineering/Maintenance Technology, Abu Dhabi Polytechnic, Al Ain, UAE ' Department of Aircraft Engineering/Maintenance Technology, Abu Dhabi Polytechnic, Al Ain, UAE ' Department of Aircraft Engineering/Maintenance Technology, Abu Dhabi Polytechnic, Al Ain, UAE ' Department of Aircraft Engineering/Maintenance Technology, Abu Dhabi Polytechnic, Al Ain, UAE

Abstract: The study presented in this paper compares the performance of active control techniques to mitigate the excited modes of the wing. In particular, a comparison between the optimal static output feedback (SOF) controller and the robust controller is presented in this paper. The purpose of these controllers is to send the optimised feedback signal to the control surface to actively reduce the vibrations and redistribute the aerodynamic loads. The multiple input multiple output (MIMO) state-space is derived by considering the structural properties of the aircraft wing, availability of control surfaces and sensors on the wing. The results are presented in terms of frequency response function (FRF) and power spectral density (PSD) for open and closed loop systems. The deflection of the control surface has also been presented for both controllers. The results have shown that both of the controllers demonstrated considerable attention of the excited modes.

Keywords: aeroelastic; active control; robust control; static output feedback control; comparison.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSA.2026.154424

International Journal of Sustainable Aviation, 2026 Vol.12 No.2, pp.240 - 255

Received: 20 Oct 2025
Accepted: 08 Feb 2026
Published online: 27 Jun 2026 *

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