Active Feedback Controller Design for a Thin Airfoil

In this paper we study the problem of active feedback controller design for a thin airfoil, whose mathematical model is derived from classical Theodorsen's formulation. A finite dimensional controller stabilizing the original infinite dimensional model is obtained using H
^∞
control techniques. We also consider the gust alleviation problem, and show that it can be formulated as a disturbance attenuation problem in the mixed H
²
/H
^∞
control framework. We use existing results on H
^∞
and mixed H
²
/H
^∞
control to illustrate our approach with a numerical example.