Experimental Design and Analysis of a Gyroelastic Beam

Abstract Gyroscopic systems and their properties have been extensively studied as Angular Momentum Devices (AMD), Control Moment Gyros (CMG) or Gyroscopes for various applications such as structure control, stability or energy storage. However, most of the works that have been done are theoretical and do not present experimental implementation. In this work we performed an experimental study of a gyroscope beam system (gyroelastic beam) focused systems on the deflection of cantilever beams or the control of flexural stresses. We first used a simple two-degree of freedom model to better understand the terms governing the design, construction and experimental evaluation of gyroelastic beam systems. We then performed experimental tests at different velocities of the gyroscopic actuator and measured the deflection of the system. The results showed that it is possible to have control of the deflection and the bending forces for this type of configurations which can be exported to helicopter blades or wind turbine blades.