Design of a wing tip device for active maneuver and gust load alleviation

In the present work the design of a wing tip device is presented along with the definition of the maneuver load controller and the gust load controller. A parametric sensitivity study has been performed to define the aerodynamic shape of the device, considering its effect on the dynamic properties of the aeroelastic system. After defining the aerodynamic shape the maneuver load alleviation controller and the gust load alleviation controller are described, the former is obtained by finding the distribution of surface deflections that can minimize the internal loads in a trim condition, while for the latter two different strategies are compared, one based on a static output feedback controller and the second based on a recurrent neural network controller. The active wing tip extension designed results able to contribute to the alleviation of wing dynamic loads and can compensate the increment of such loads resulting from the span extension.