Research Terms
Engineering Materials Engineering Materials Characterization Materials Reliability Nanotechnology Mathematical Statistics Probability Quantum Mechanics
Keywords
Famu-Fsu College Of Engineering
Industries
AIAA, Member; 2009 - present
MRS, Member; 2008 - present
ASME, Member; 1996 - present
Flow control theory and actuator development have been the subject of intense research for more than a decade for applications on various aircraft structures including fixed wings, cavity flow, rotor blades, and impinging jets.
The present invention comprises a piezoelectric actuator for varying the throat geometry of a microjet nozzle, thereby varying the characteristics of the microjet produced by the microjet nozzle. The inventive device is capable of producing pulsed flow and also rapidly variable flow in order to provide active control. To our knowledge, most of the actuators that are presently available suffer from a limited dynamic range, insufficient control authority, very high mass flow, complexity, size/weight and/or robustness. Piezoelectric materials, in particular, are used in stack actuator configurations for high bandwidth nanoprecision control applications which makes it ideal for actively throttling an array of microjets. The direct conversion of electrical energy to mechanical energy provides unique capabilities when coupled to an actively deforming supersonic nozzle.