The buffeting phenomenon, the vibration of the tail unit occurring when a small aircraft is flying at a high angle of attack, accelerates fatigue damage to the structure. Therefore, if it is found during the development stage, it would cause an increase in costs and delays in the project due to the necessary design changes. Accordingly, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has been working on the development of a damping structure with high vibration damping efficiency which could be added to the existing structure with minimum weight gain. We have successfully developed a new damping structure that can be attached to the tail structure based on the basic characteristic testing and finite element method (FEM) modelling, utilizing VECTRANTM composite materials with excellent vibration damping characteristics. In this new structure, we have confirmed a 10% reduction in distortion (doubling the projected fatigue life) at the tail fitting portion in our vibration tests using full-scale models.
