9th AIAA/ISSMO Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization
4-6 September 2002, Atlanta, Georgia
DYNAMIC AEROELASTIC RESPONSE OF ADAPTABLE
AIRFOILS USING NEURAL NETWORKS
Anand Natarajan, Rakesh K. Kapania y and Daniel J. Inman
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, Virginia-24061 - 0203
Abstract
This paper focuses on training neural networks to repre-
sent the unsteady incompressible aerodynamic forces act-
ing over an airfoil and also to evaluate the aeroelastic re-
sponse of adaptive airfoils. The adaptive behavior studied
here is a spring having a variable torsional stiffness as a
part of a two dimensional aeroelastic system. This prop-
erty of a varying stiffness is used for flutter suppression. A
distributed set of doublet panels on the airfoil surface are
used to calculate the unsteady pressure at every point of
the adaptable airfoil. The strength of the doublet panels is
determined using Neumann type non-penetration bound-
ary conditions. The unsteady aerodynamic loading over
the airfoil is calculated using a time marching scheme.
To capture the effect of the unsteady circulation on the
airfoil, it is necessary to represent the wake also by dou-
blets. This time-marching aerodynamics model, used in
obtaining the impulse response, is compared to the time
history of lift as given by the Wagner function. Numeri-
cal results for the response to a sudden change in the an-
gle of attack, as described in the existing literature do not
match with the Wagner solution. We describe the numer-
ical problems concerned with the calculation of the un-
steady lift generated by an airfoil under a sudden pitching
velocity change. The adaptive nature of the structure is
studied as a time-variant system, the stiffness of the air-
foil is allowed to be time varying. The unsteady aerody-
namic loads obtained from the panel method is coupled to
a linear time variant structural dynamics code based on an
approach of matrix exponential time marching. Using this
numerical solver for time variant dynamic aeroelasticity,
neural networks are trained for providing an efficient nu-
merical representation of the aeroelastic behavior of adap-
tive airfoils. Feed-forward neural networks are used, since
 Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Aerospace and Ocean
Engineering
y Professor, Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Asso-
ciate Fellow AIAA
z G.R. Goodson Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Director - Center for Intelligent material Systems and Structures, Fellow,
AIAA
1
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Copyright © 2002 by the author(s). Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.
AIAA 2002-5599
z
the approach of matrix exponential time marching allows
the training of an array of feed-forward neural networks
without resorting to small time steps in the time march-
ing training process. This neural network modeling of the
time variant aeroelastic system is utilized for control of
airfoil oscillations and flutter suppression.
Introduction
For incompressible inviscid flow, the use of panel meth-
ods leads to a faster estimate of the unsteady fluid dy-
namic forces as compared to the use of Computational
Fluid Dynamics(CFD). Panel methods consist of distribut-
ing singularities such as sources, vortices and doublets on
the surface of an airfoil or a wing. The boundary condi-
tions on the wing or airfoil then determines the strengths
of these singularities. Once the strengths of the singular-
ities are known, it is possible to calculate the unsteady
pressure distribution at each point over the wing or air-
foil. The boundary conditions that are imposed over the
airfoil are the no penetration condition and the Kutta con-
dition. The non-penetration condition requires that the
normal velocity of the fluid at the airfoil wall should be
equal to the airfoil surface velocity. The Kutta condition
at the trailing edge requires that the flow velocity at the
trailing edge should vanish. Numerically this is difficult
to achieve, hence the position and size of the panel at the
trailing edge needs to be carefully chosen. A detailed de-
scription on various panel methods can be found in Ref.
1.
In the present work, doublets are distributed over the
surface of the airfoil. The strength of the doublets for
steady flow is determined by applying the boundary con-
ditions:  
@ @g
@z
(x; z) = U1 @x
 (1)
where  is the velocity potential, x; z are the geometry
variables of the airfoil, U1 is the free stream velocity and
y = g(x) is the function describing the airfoil surface.
The influence of each panel on every other panel on the
airfoil is calculated. For unsteady calculations, the in-
fluence of the wake on the airfoil is very important. A
time-marching scheme is used and at each time step, one
doublet panel is shed into the wake from the airfoil trail-
ing edge. The combined influence of all the wake panels
on the airfoil panels is calculated for every time step.
The fundamental derivation for panel methods comes
from the governing Laplacian equation for incompressible
potential flow, namely,
r2  = 0 (2)
where  is the velocity potential. Equation 2 is valid in
steady and unsteady incompressible flow. Using Green’s
theorem and Eq. (2), it can be proved that2 , any surface in
incompressible potential flow can be replaced by a sum-
mation of doublets and sources. Typically in thin airfoil
theory, a doublet represents the lifting component and a
source represents the airfoil thickness. To make the anal-
ysis simpler, we are considering only doublet representa-
tions over the airfoil. According to Ref. 1, the absence
of source panels is not a disadvantage for lifting airfoils.
The use of smart materials in wings allows the active con-
trol of the deflections of the wing structure. These adap-
tive structures are preliminary models of biological struc-
tures. One of the properties of biological structures is
that they can possess time varying stiffness while execut-
ing movements3 . By using adaptive material in aircraft
wings, it is possible to introduce this property of time
varying stiffness. It is also possible to utilize the con-
cept of a variable stiffness spar4 to change the torsional
stiffness of the wing. The time-varying stiffness is used
herein to control airfoil oscillations. It is also advanta-
geous to have a variable stiffness wing in the case of mor-
phing wings as this allows the wing to hold the load while
still being flexible enough to allow morphing of the airfoil
for different flight regimes.
Variable coefficient differential equations present many
difficulties in obtaining analytical or efficient numerical
solutions. Since time varying coefficients are now present
in the aeroelastic equation of dynamic equilibrium, an ef-
ficient numerical scheme to solve the structural dynamic
problem is needed. A very accurate and computationally
efficient scheme of Matrix Exponential time marching as
described in Ref. 5 is used. This scheme allows the use of
time steps of the order of 10 2 . This is especially useful
in training neural networks since the time step being large,
the data set used in the training can be reduced. By train-
ing neural networks using the method Matrix Exponential
time marching and the doublet panel method, a 2-D aeroe-
lastic analysis is performed wherein the aeroelastic model
possesses pitch and plunge degrees of freedom.
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Steady and Unsteady Aerodynamics
Before computing unsteady aerodynamics, steady state
computations are performed using distributed doublets over
the surface of the airfoil with an infinite wake. Figure
1 describes the distribution of pressure over a symmetric
airfoil at an angle of attack of 50 . This matches the the-
oretical solution everywhere over the airfoil except at the
trailing edge. This discrepancy near the trailing edge is
due to numerical problems of satisfying the Kutta condi-
tion exactly at the trailing edge1 . The Kutta condition is
satisfied numerically by forcing the vorticity at the trailing
edge due to the doublet panels to be zero. Theoretically,
the velocity of flow should be zero at the trailing edge, as
long as the trailing edge is not a cusp. This is difficult to
realize numerically without manipulating the trailing edge
panel. However, the trailing edge coefficient of pressure
is still finite and close to unity.
Even though the trailing edge creates some numeri-
cal problems, the code is able to replicate the steady state
pressure. Hence we now try to model unsteady aerody-
namics of a symmetric airfoil as the next step. The theo-
retical solution to the unsteady aerodynamic lift and pitch-
ing moment on an airfoil in inviscid flow is calculated us-
ing convolution integrals of the Wagner function6 . Physi-
cally, the Wagner function is a measure of the circulatory
lift on the airfoil due to a unit step change in angle of at-
tack. It is given as
Z1
(s) =
1 C (k) iks
2i 1 k e dk (3)
Here k is the reduced frequency, s is the non-dimensional
time, C (k ) is termed the Theodorsen function which is a
ratio of Hankel functions of the second kind. Reference
6 provides more details of the Theodorsen and Wagner
functions. The Wagner function has a value of 0.5 just
after the impulse has been imparted and then grows to a
steady state value of 1 for infinite time. We test the dou-
blet panel code for the response of a symmetric airfoil to
an impulsive angle of attack. Figure 2 shows the growth
of the lift with time as predicted by the present code. It
can be seen that the solution approaches the Wagner solu-
tion. However, the initial impulsive start that is obtained
using the theoretical result based on the Wagner function
is not attainable by the doublet panel code. This is be-
cause the doublet panel code is a time domain solution.
The Wagner function is derived in frequency domain and
hence it is able to represent the impulsive jump in the lift
at initial time exactly. A time domain code on the other
hand takes a finite time, no matter how small, to approx-
imate this jump in lift. However, it should be noted that
both solutions approach the same steady state solution.
 The response shown in Fig 2 is similar to that obtained
by Basu7 for a symmetric Von-Mises airfoil. Since in the
time domain, an impulse is provided over a time step, the
response of the system as shown in Fig. 2 will change de-
pending on the time step size. Furthermore, theoretically,
the angular velocity of the airfoil is infinite at zero time.
A time domain result will result in a finite velocity and
finite inertial effects at the first time step. The time step
used in the time stepping scheme determines the vortex
shedding frequency into the wake. Hence it is required to
select an optimum time step that captures the effect of the
sudden change in the angle of attack on the aerodynam-
ics and the subsequent growth of circulation. Reference
8 provides the details for the discrepancies involved be-
tween the Wagner solution and the solution for different
types of airfoil subjected to an impulsive pitch rate.
This doublet panel method can now represent the un-
steady aerodynamics over a pitching airfoil. Figure 3 shows
the unsteady lift over a symmetric airfoil with a variable
amplitude pitching motion. The theoretical solution for
the problem in Fig. 3 is obtained using a convolution of
the Wagner function with the downwash velocity. How-
ever, it was seen previously (Fig. 2), that the time do-
main solution does not provide the same response to an
impulsive change in angle of attack as computed from
the theoretical Wagner solution. Hence the convolution
of the Wagner impulse response with sinusoidal functions
does show some differences with the time domain so-
lution obtained from the doublet panel code for a sinu-
soidally pitching airfoil as can be seen from the compari-
son made in Fig. 3, but the two results are still similar.
Neural Network Representations
Figure 4 shows the essential constituents of a neural net-
work. The concept of neural networks is an attempt at
an artificial simulation of the functioning of the human
brain9 . Accordingly, an artificial neural network like the
one shown in Fig. 4 is a grouping of artificial ”neurons”
in different layers. These neurons are mathematical op-
erators. The input to the neuron is multiplied by a quan-
tity known as the weight. Any additional input to this
weighted neuron output is termed as a bias. Design of a
neural network consists of arranging these ”neurons” in
different layers, deciding on their connectivity, defining
the inputs and outputs of the system and determining the
strength of each connection in between the neurons. The
output of each layer of neurons is fed to the next layer of
neurons through a selected function. The strength of the
neuron connections is based on training a neural network
on a series of data sets. Once a neural network has been
trained using sufficient data, then the network is capable
3
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of providing the desired output given a new set of input
data.
One can designate a subset of the nodes of a neural
network as ”input nodes” and another subset as ”output
nodes,” whose states represent the model’s results. One
can then fit the input-output mapping into the network’s
connection strengths such that when any particular set of
input states is applied, the dynamics of the network gen-
erates the desired output states at the output nodes. The
main constituents of the neural network are the weights
which multiply each input and the functional operation
performed with each such weighted input. For example
if the functional operation, f (x) which happens to be the
transfer function of the first layer, is a linear operator, then
the output of the first layer is a weighted sum of the inputs,
P output of the first layer is
i.e., the
y = ni=0 wi xi
On the other hand, if the operator f (x) happened to be a
non-linear function such as a Sigmoidal function, then the
output of the first layer could be
y= P1=0 w x
1+e n
i i i
Thus depending on the layer transfer function, a broad
family of system representations can be made. Further-
more, as seen in Fig. 4, each layer output is connected to
another layer for more functional operations. Thus the un-
derlying mathematical representation of a neural network
can become quite complicated.
Neural network representations of dynamical systems
approximate the response of the system and automatically
possess the impulse response for that dynamical system10 .
During the neural network training, the input data is mapped
to the desired output target. The training starts with an
initial assignment of the neuron weights, biases and layer
transfer function functions. This initial processing of the
input data through the network produces an output which
most likely is not the desired target. Hence an error is
now calculated between the neural network output and the
desired target. A gradient based scheme such as the con-
jugate gradient method is now implemented to minimize
this error of the neural network output. This means that
the derivatives of the error in the network with respect to
the neuron weights are determined for each iteration in
the training process. Training of the neural network is a
very important task and care should be taken such that the
neural network is able to reproduce the target data with-
out over-fitting. This means that the error margin of the
neural network away from the target data should not be
significantly greater than near the target data.
In this work, only deterministic neural networks are
considered. Here we consider both feed-forward and re-
current neural networks.
1. Feed Forward Networks: In this type of neural
 network architecture, the flow of data is always uni-
directional, that is, the input of one layer of the
neural networks is obtained only from the previ-
ous layer. However, during the training process,
the neural networks require back propagation tech-
niques, that is, the weights of a layer are adjusted
depending on the output of the next layer. Feed for-
ward neural networks are generally used for input-
output mapping where the mapping is not time de-
pendent. However, dynamical systems can also be
modeled using feed forward networks if appropri-
ate time domain training routines are used to repre-
sent the system.
2. Recurrent Neural networks: Recurrent neural net-
works have the output of the network fed back to
previous layers to form a new input of the network.
Hence recurrent neural networks are able to rep-
resent time delays and transient response. These
neural networks can represent dynamical systems.
Some of the popular recurrent neural networks are
the Hopfield, Elman, Jordan networks. The names
are based on the developers of the respective net-
works. A stable attractor of a dynamical system is
either a trajectory or a fixed point such that any ini-
tial condition in the vicinity of this attractor will al-
ways converge towards it in forward time. Hopfield11
networks are capable of converging to a stable at-
tractor of the dynamical system given an initial con- man recurrent network with the numerical solution ob-
ditions set. For obtaining the transient response
of the system, Elman or Jordan networks are used.
These networks have the output of the previous time
step as an additional input12 . Jordan and Elman
neural networks differ only by the layer from which
the feedback occurs. In Jordan type networks the
output of one time state is fed-back to the input
layer for the next time state. In Elman neural net-
work, the output is fed-back from the hidden layer
to the input layer.
Aeroelastic Applications
Aeroelastic calculations involve fluid-structure coupling.
This means that every displacement of the structure under
fluid dynamic loads, as predicted by a structural solver,
will in-turn alter the fluid dynamic response and vice-
versa. This coupling between the aerodynamics and struc-
tural behavior can lead to very large computational costs
for an aeroelastic analysis that requires use of compu-
tational fluid dynamics/computational structural mechan-
ics. Hence efficient alternative methods that can provide
rapid aeroelastic response solutions need to be implemented. degree of freedom aeroelastic system. Initially we shall
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Most applications of neural networks in aeroelastic-
ity have been in system parameter estimation for aircraft
control 13 or in flutter speed prediction and flutter control
from experimental data 14;15 . Neural network controllers
have been designed for non-linear vibration control of he-
licopter rotor blades16 using a 2-D aeroelastic model. A
recent work in the application of neural networks to static
non-linear aeroelastic problems in morphing wings17 de-
scribes the procedure of aeroelastic optimization of an
adaptable bump on the surface of an airfoil. Here we uti-
lize trained artificial neural networks to provide a rapid
solver to simulate the dynamic response of a time-variant
2-D aeroelastic system.
System dynamics can be represented by breaking down
the time domain of interest into small time intervals and
training a neural network to represent the response of the
system for each of these time intervals. Thus the dynami-
cal system is modeled by many neural networks with con-
stant weights, each neural network representing one time
interval in the dynamical system. An equivalent model-
ing is to have a single neural network with time variant
weights, that is the neural network is itself a time vari-
ant system. As an example consider a system with time
varying stiffness, modeled as
x + (100 + 10sin(t))x = 20sin(t) (4)
Figure 5 compares the response from a 3 layer El-
tained using a Runge-Kutta time marching scheme. Here
the neural network uses time intervals of 0.04 seconds for
each training sequence. The comparison is agreeable ex-
cept for noise that is initially present and also there are
some differences in the maximum amplitude. Presence of
noise is typical of feedback neural networks and is one of
the disadvantages of such neural networks. Hence in or-
der to present a better match between the results as given
by a neural network and those by the time varying dy-
namical system, it is necessary to use smaller time steps
than the 0.04 second step used for this example. However,
use of smaller time steps increases the size of the data set
required for the network training. Large quantities of in-
put data do not allow for accurate ANN training. Hence
instead of using reduced time steps to make the neural
network representation of the time varying system more
accurate, it is more reasonable to study accurate numer-
ical solvers for linear time varying systems that can use
large time steps. The ANNS can then be trained by using
these efficient numerical solvers.
The system shown in Fig. 5 is subjected to a har-
monic loading. If this loading is now replaced by a non-
conservative time varying load, then this becomes a one
consider the system is time invariant, that is the stiffness we first look at the 2-D aeroelastic system modeled by the
is taken to be a constant. The governing equation is then following equations.

 + K  = M (t) (5) mh + s  + kh h = L(t) (7)

where  is the airfoil pitching angle, M (t) is the un- I  + s h + k (t) = M (t)
where m is the mass, I is the mass moment of inertia, 
steady pitching moment. The airfoil is given an initial
pitch displacement and this sets off the unsteady aero- is the pitch angle, s is the first moment of inertia, h is
dynamic code which provides the instantaneous pitching the plunge displacement, kh and k are the stiffness in
moment. A structural dynamics code will now be devel-
plunge and pitch respectively. A schematic representation
oped which will be coupled to the panel code in order to
of this aeroelastic system is shown in Fig. 6. This system
calculate the instantaneous response of the airfoil for ev- possesses a time varying pitch stiffness. In state space
ery change in the unsteady pitching moment. form, this system can be re-written as
This aeroelastic response calculation is again repeated
for a time variant dynamic system, that is, the rotary stiff- fx_ g + [C (t)]fxg = ff g (8)
ness is a function of time. This variable stiffness is use-
0 1
ful in control of airfoil oscillations. The model of the 0 1 0 0
B kh s k m C
time varying stiffness is exponentially varying such as in
B
B mI s2
0 mI s2
0 C
C
Here C (t) = B
Ref. 18. where the use of adaptive materials in struc-
B 0 0 0 1 C
C
tures to allow for active control of structural deflection is
highlighted. Recent advances in variable stiffness wings4
@ kh I k s A
mI s2
0 mI s2
0
also allow for such exponentially saturating stiffness vari-
ation. Accordingly the time varying torsional stiffness is and 0 LI M s 1
assumed as
@ MmI
f (t) = B m
s2 C
L s A
k (t) = k0 + k01 (1 c1 e c2 t ) (6)
mI s2
where k0 is the initial torsional stiffness and k0 + k01 is Using the method of matrix exponential time march-
the maximum torsional stiffness. The rate of variation is ing, the solution to this system for a time interval is writ-
controlled by the two parameters c1 and c2 . ten as R
d tt0 [C (t)]dt R
Training of recurrent neural networks based on these
(e fxg) = e t0 [C (t)] f
t
(9)
numerical results for dynamic aeroelastic problems re- dt
quires that the time step be small. Otherwise, presence This system can be solved as
R R
of noise could be a problem. Hence the use of recurrent
 Z t  
0 C (t)]dt 0 C ( )]d
neural networks trained by such time stepping schemes
x(t) = e fx0 g + ff g dt
t t

would be computationally expensive and would require

t
[
e t
[

t0
large computer memory. Feed-forward neural networks (10)
can also be used for dynamic aeroelastic problems, pro- Here the time interval, (t0 ; t), chosen for each solution in
vided a suitable training algorithm is developed. We in- the time marching scheme is fixed with respect to mini-
vestigate first a stable time integration scheme for linear mizing the errors due to the non-commutative matrix mul-
time varying systems using large time steps. The utiliza- tiplication, i.e.
tion of such a scheme for the training of feed-forward neu- R R
e t0 [C (t)]dt [C (t)] [C (t)] e t0 [C (t)]dt = (t)
t t
ral networks to represent the dynamic aeroelastic system (11)
is further investigated.
where (t) is the error tolerance level.
Equation 10 can be written as
Response of Linear Time Varying
Dynamical Systems xn+1 = n+1 (xn + n+1 ) (12)
R +1 [C (t)]dt
where n = e
tn

R t +1 R
tn and 
+1
Linear Time Varying (LTV) systems can be analyzed by +1 [C ( )]d
ff g dt.
tn

the method of Matrix Exponential time marching5 . Though n+1 = tn e

n tn

an analytical solution is described in Ref. 5 for single de- This means the response at time tn+1 is linked to the re-
gree of freedom systems, this work can be extended to sponse at time tn by the state transition matrix at time
multi-degree of freedom systems numerically. To do so, tn+1 , namely n+1 and the forcing integral vector n+1 .

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This type of representation was shown to be extremely
accurate for the analysis of time varying systems in Ref.
5. Herein, Eq. (4) concerning the periodically time vary-
ing system is solved using the method given by Eq. (12)
to evaluate the accuracy of this matrix exponential time-
marching method. The response of the system represented
by Eq. (4) is shown in Fig. 7 which clearly shows an ex-
cellent match between the theoretical result and the Ma-
trix Exponential time marching approach given by Eq.
(12). The time step of 0.1 second was used for solving Eq.
(4) by the methodology described by Eq. (12). Hence this
technique of Matrix Exponential time marching is able
to use large time steps and still obtain very accurate re-
sults. This is very advantageous in training neural net-
works since the data set required to represent the dynam-
ical system for the time domain of interest can be made
to be smaller in comparison with the recurrent neural net-
works such as the one used in calculating the response of
Eq. (4) shown in Fig. 5.
In the present neural network representation, three neu-
ral networks will be trained to represent the aeroelastic
system governed by Eq. (7). The first ANN shall repre-
sent the state transition matrix, (t) which depends on the
system parameters and the time interval used for its def-
inition. Another ANN is trained to represent the aerody-
namic loads during the concerned time interval of interest.
The third ANN represents the forcing integral, (t) for
the time interval, tn to tn+1 . These three neural networks
when coupled to each other can be trained to represent a
feed-forward array for dynamic aeroelastic analysis with
time varying torsional stiffness.
Neural Network Training
The training of the neural network is the most important
process in the representation of any system using neural
networks. Some of the gradient based methods for train-
ing of ANNs are the method of steepest descent, con-
jugate gradient method or Gauss-Newton methods. The
steepest descent and conjugate gradient methods are first
order methods that require the computation of the Jaco-
bian of the estimated error in the output with respect to
some system parameters. These methods can be written
in the following form
xk+1 = xk k Jk (13)
Here, the output at iteration k +1 is dependent on a learn-
ing rate k and the Jacobian matrix Jk constitutes the first
derivatives of the error in the neural network output with
respect to the neuron weights. The error of the neural
network is defined as the L2 norm of the difference be-
tween the neural network output and the desired target.
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The learning rate is a constant for the steepest descent
method. Conjugate gradient methods choose the direc-
tion of the gradient based on certain conditions. Two pop-
ular Conjugate gradient schemes are the Fletcher-Reeves
and the Polak-Ribiere method. More information on these
schemes can be found in Ref. 19.
A second order gradient based scheme is the Gauss-
Newton method, a popular version of which is the
Levenberg-Marquardt method. Here the first and second
derivatives of the error in the neural network output needs
to be estimated. Thus the Jacobian and Hessian matri-
ces needs to be evaluated. The computation of the matrix
of the second derivatives of the error with respect to the
neuron weights constitutes the Hessian matrix. It is clear
that the Gauss-Newton second order methods are com-
putationally expensive and need a significant amount of
system memory. However they are very reliable numeri-
cal schemes and have faster convergence than the conju-
gate gradient/steepest descent methods. The Levenberg-
Marquardt method can be written mathematically as
xk+1 = xk (H + I Æ ) 1 J T e (14)
where H is the Hessian matrix, Æ is a constant diagonal
multiplier and e is the error in the output. The Levenberg-
Marquardt algorithm provides for a diagonally dominant
matrix by means of the added constant Æ . The neural net-
works trained in the aeroelastic analysis that are described
herein are based on the Levenberg-Marquardt method. The
Matlab software package has a versatile neural network
toolbox and in this paper, the training of neural networks
is done through the use of this toolbox.
For dynamical systems, the input-output relationship
must capture the state of the system. Haykin9 defines a
state of a system as ”A set of quantities that summarizes
all the information about the past behavior of the system
that is needed to uniquely describe its future behavior, ex-
cept for the purely external effects arising from the ap-
plied output”. We define the following input-output rela-
tionship for the three neural networks that were described
in the previous section.
0 1
ti
1. ANN(1) Input - @ ti+1 A , Output - []
k (ti+1 )
0 1
ti
B ti+1 C 0 1
B C cli
B u1 C
B C
2. ANN(2) Input - B h C, Output - B
B cli+1 C
C
B C @ cmi A
B
B h_ C
C cmi+1
@  A
_
 0 1
ti
B ti+1 C
B C
B k (ti+1 ) C
B C
3. ANN(3) Input - B C Output - fg
B cli C ever, for a varying stiffness system, it is not possible to
B
B cli+1 C
C train the neural network system for all possible stiffness
@ cmi A variations. Thus testing the neural networks for different
cmi+1
Aeroelastic Computations
The doublet panel code is linked to the numerical struc-
tural dynamic code based on the method of matrix expo-
nential time marching. The numerical integration in Eq.
(8) is performed using Simpson’s rule. Initially a one di-
mensional system governed by Eq. (5) is solved, that is
with only the pitching motion of the airfoil. The stiff-
ness is constant at 5 units. Figure 8 compares the result
of the present numerical code consisting of the coupled
panel method and the structural dynamics with the theo-
retical result computed using a convolution of the pitch
rate with the Wagner function. As can be seen the match
is not exact, but near similar. This is because the theo-
retical solution does not take into account the thickness
of the airfoil which plays an important role. References
7 and 8 explain the role of panel methods in capturing
the thickness effects and note similar differences between
theoretical results and panel methods.
The plunge displacement of the airfoil only changes
the downwash velocity over the airfoil and hence this al-
lows for modification of the above panel code to include
the effect of the velocity of plunge. The normal boundary
conditions over the doublet panels will now reflect this
change and hence the doublet potential will account for
both the pitch and plunge displacements.
We now utilize the concept of neural networks to rep-
resent this aeroelastic system in the manner described in
the last section. Having done so for both a time variant
system and a time invariant system, we will be in a po-
sition to design a neural controller that can provide for
flutter suppression in an active manner.
Neural Network Modeling for
Flutter Suppression
As mentioned earlier, the Levenberg-Marquardt routine in
the Matlab toolbox for neural networks is used to train the
three neural networks titled ANN1, ANN2, ANN3 to rep-
resent the dynamic aeroelastic system. The networks are
designed with respect to both a fixed system stiffness and
a varying torsional stiffness. The variation in the torsional
stiffness is according to Eq. (6). The fixed stiffness neural
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network system will represent the corresponding aeroe-
lastic system exactly within the tolerance bounds since the
training routine uses the same system parameters. How-
stiffness variations is necessary. Accordingly during the
training process, Eq. (6) uses certain constants, c1 and c2
and during testing, the constants will be changed. This
tests the fidelity of the system to different system parame-
ters. If the testing is successful, then it also establishes an
adaptive aeroelastic controller wherein, stability in oscil-
lations can be obtained using a variable stiffness system.
Having trained, the network with a set of stiffness
parameters at various free stream velocities, we test the
ANN at a different system stiffness. Here we consider
c1 = 1:33, c2 = 1, k0 = 5, k01 = 12 for the testing of the
ANNs. Note that the parameters c1 and c2 are different
from those used for training the ANN. Figure 9 displays
the result of the testing. As we can see, the aeroelastic
system as represented by this array of neural networks
does show some differences from the numerical aeroelas-
tic system, but these errors do reduce with time. More-
over, the overall behavior of the neural network system
follows the numerical solver quite accurately. Hence we
conclude that the neural network system represented by
three networks, ANN1, ANN2, ANN3 as described ear-
lier can be used to describe the aeroelastic system given
by Eq. 7.
This is now an adaptive representation of an aeroe-
lastic system with time varying stiffness. Each time the
stiffness variation rate or magnitude changes, the numer-
ical solver need not be used. On the other hand, one can
use the neural network system. This allows for the design
of a flutter suppression toolbox. Consider Fig. 10 which
shows the three designed neural networks linked together
to describe the output of the aeroelastic system. A feed-
back loop is also shown which evaluates the stability of
the system. The stability is based on the response of the
system during one period of oscillation. In the state space
plot, if the jx2 + x_ 2 jt+T > jx2 + x_ 2 jt , the system is unsta-
ble. Here, the period of oscillation is T and the stability is
calculated at a time step t + T . Since this is a linear sys-
tem, this approach is valid. In general, the procedure to
detect flutter is to calculate the work done over a period of
oscillation by the external non-conservative forces. Hence
the system is at the flutter boundary if
Z t+T
4Wnc = ff (t)gT fx_ gdt = 0 (15)
t
where f (t) is the non-conservative aerodynamic loads and
fx_ g is the vector containing the system velocities. In
Fig. 11, the initial dynamic aeroelastic response is cal-
culated using the constant stiffness structural neural net-
works, ANN1 and ANN3. Once the system is tested to
be unstable, (4Wnc > 0), the variable stiffness adap-
tive neural networks are switched on for the structural dy-
namics so as to bring the system again within the stabil-
ity boundary. To achieve this, the neural network array
that was developed and tested in Fig. 11 is used. Differ-
ent stiffness variations are used. The reduced frequency
of the aeroelastic system is set to 1.1 which is just over
the flutter reduced frequency for this system. This can
be seen in Fig. 11.a. The neural network controller de-
tects the system instability after the first period and then
switches over to the variable stiffness mode. The stiff-
ness is now increased till stability is achieved. This is
shown in Fig. 11.b which depicts a stable oscillatory pat-
tern for the time history of the airfoil’s pitching angle.
For Fig. 11.b, the stiffness variation that was used was
k (t) = 5 + 12 (1 1:33e t ). This was found to be suf-
ficient to restore stability within one period of oscillation
of the aeroelastic system.
Once the input-output data that is required for train-
ing the neural networks has been collected, the training of
the neural networks using the MATLAB software on an
SGI origin machine takes around 15 minutes of computa-
tional time using one processor. The computational time
required for the neural network simulation is extremely
small. For example the 5 seconds simulation shown in
Fig. 11(a) was obtained in a few a seconds on an SGI
Origin machine using 1 processor while running Matlab.
Whereas the numerical aeroelastic routine coupling the
structural dynamics solver with the panel method for aero-
dynamics, takes almost 4 hours for the same response cal-
culation. Since the neural network array allows such a
rapid simulation, the controller can directly calculate the
response to detect instability and prevent it using the ANN
based on the variable stiffness approach.
Conclusions
A neural network based aeroelastic response solver was
developed for a two dimensional dynamic aeroelastic sys-
tem wherein the torsional stiffness was assumed to be
time-varying. Three neural networks were trained to
achieve this goal. The trained neural networks described
the free vibration response, the unsteady aerodynamic loads
and the forced response of the system. Hence when these
three neural networks were integrated, the true dynamic
aeroelastic response is obtained. The neural networks were
trained from a doublet panel method to describe the un-
steady aerodynamic loads over an airfoil and from a ma-
trix exponential time marching structural dynamics solver
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to evaluate the dynamic response of the system to these
aerodynamic loads. The trained neural networks could
function at a varying torsional stiffness within a specified
range of stiffness variation. This array of neural networks
was then utilized to detect flutter in the aeroelastic system
and suppress flutter by using the concept of a time varying
torsional stiffness.
Further research work in using artificial neural net-
works for representing dynamic aeroelasticity can be pur-
sued to investigate more sophisticated problems of a non-
linear nature such as limit cycle oscillations.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of AFOSR
grant F49620-99-1-0294, monitored by Major B. Sanders,
Ph.D of AFRL and Dr. E. Garcia of DARPA.
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American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
 Neural Network Response
1.5 Numerical Response

0.5

x(t)
0

−0.5

−1

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4

Time (Seconds)

Figure 3: Unsteady lift over a pitching airfoil with pitch

angle (t) = 0:1t sin(2t)as computed by the Doublet
+(100+10sin(t))x =
Figure 5: Response of the system x
Panel Code and compared with the Wagner Solution
20sin(t)

Figure 4: Schematic Diagram Depicting Two Layers of a

Neural Network, with Input Weights wi , Layer Transfer Figure 6: Two degree of Freedom Airfoil in a Free Stream
Functions, f (x) and g (x), Neuron Biases, b and c

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 Testing of Neural Network

Neural Network
3 Numerical Result

Angle (Degrees)
1

−1

−2

−3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time (Seconds)

Figure 7: Comparison of the Response calculated using Figure 9: Neural network testing with variable torsional
the Matrix Exponential Time Marching Method using a stiffness
time step of 0.1 second with the Theoretical Response

Figure 10: The array of neural networks depicting both

Figure 8: Solution to the equation   + 5  = M (t) using the constant stiffness aeroelastic system and the variable
the theoretical result for a flat plate and the panel method stiffness aeroelastic system

11
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
 3

2
Pitch Angle (Degrees)

−1

−2

−3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (Seconds)

a) Unstable Pitching Oscillations

3

2
Pitch Angle (Degrees)

−1

−2

−3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Time (Seconds)

b) Flutter control by varying stiffness method

Figure 11: Control of Flutter at the flutter boundary using

variable torsional stiffness

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