Theoretical and experimental investigations on a data-driven trajectory planning scheme for dynamic shape control of piezo-actuated compliant morphing structures

Piezo-actuated compliant morphing structures can transmit motion and force via elastic deformation with lower weight, simplified design, and higher accuracy, a typical example is the variable camber wing. However, the rapid shape change of compliant structures is a challenging control problem because it often results in a high level of vibration due to the structural flexibility necessary to achieve the morphing requirement. This study presents a model-free data-driven trajectory planning approach based on spline curves and surrogate-based optimization (SBO) to obtain smooth “rest-to-rest” morphing trajectories. The macro-fiber composite (MFC) patches are used for piezoelectric actuators to generate elastic deformation. The flexible beam and variable camber wing are used for both linear numerical simulation and experimental tests with various nonlinearities and uncertainties. An optimization criterion is proposed to minimize both transient and residual vibrations during the “rest-to-rest” motion. An extraordinarily terminal displacement error function is added to eliminate the effects of the hysteresis and creep of the actuator. The control inputs, i.e., voltage profiles for the MFCs, are defined using cubic spline curves via only a few control points. Then, the optimization problem is solved by employing a Kriging surrogate model-based algorithm integrated with the expected improvement (EI) infilling-sampling criterion, which constructs an efficient algorithm similar to reinforcement learning. The optimal morphing trajectories can be highly efficiently obtained by using only 4 control points and less than 150 samplings. The experimental results of both the plate model and the variable camber wing model show that the proposed method can not only achieve a smooth dynamic morphing trajectory with minimized vibration but also automatically compensate for hysteresis and creep. The proposed method provides an effective means for the rapid realization of an optimized morphing trajectory for compliant morphing structures. •A novel high-efficient model-free trajectory planning for smart compliant structures scheme is proposed.•Kriging model combined with EI infilling-sampling criterion and spline curve is used to achieve Surrogate-based optimization.•Improved trajectory can be determined via 4 control points and less than 150 sampling points.•Experimental validations via MFC-actuated structures are presented with favorable dynamic shape control performance.