Machine Learning for "Self-Healing" Flow Control*

Fan array wind tunnels (fan arrays) are a novel wind tunnel design consisting of multiple, individually controlled fans. This modularity is well suited to generate complex flows, such as those faced by unmanned aerial vehicles flying at low altitudes. In our study of fan array control, we postulate the problem of maintaining a uniform flow profile downstream despite the failure of particular fan units, which is expected in practice with some fan arrays numbering in the thousands of fans. Thus making the flow 'self-healing.' For this, we explore the application of reinforcement learning on a system consisting of a fan array with "dead" fans blowing into a grid of pressure probes downstream.