Paras Vadher, CUEDCambridge Fluids Network - fluids-related seminars11 June 2025 2:00pmJDB Seminar RMControl systems capable of mitigating the effects of wind gusts are crucial for enabling small, slow-flying air vehicles and wind turbines to operate in hostile unsteady environments. For effective real-time response, the control systems require physics-based low-order models (LOMs). LOMs are mathematical formulations that estimate the force response to disturbances and provide mitigatory control input with short computation times. In recent experimental studies, a LOM constructed from classical, linearised, unsteady theory has been successfully used to predict wing forces in response to streamwise and transverse gusts [1]. This work further extends these studies to the mitigation of forces on a wing encountering a spanwise vortex gust.
This research requires carefully controlled experiments in which a wing is exposed to a well-defined vortex. Pitching an upstream wing results in the shedding of a starting vortex, which can be characterised as the vortex gust. The talk will begin by systematically exploring the factors governing the production of starting vortices by pitching wings. Following this, the talk will investigate the ability of the LOM to predict the forces experienced in a wing-vortex gust encounter, before finally employing the LOM to produce wing pitch profiles that mitigate the lift transients.