International Journal of Aerospace and Lightweight Structures

doi: 10.3850/S2010428615100059

Sawtooth Evaluation for Flutter Characteristics

Abid Ali Khan^1,a, Nadeem Shafi Khan² and Zahid Mehmood^{2 1}Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan. ^aKhan.abid@ist.edu.pk ²Aerospace Engineering Department, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.

ABSTRACT

Flutter is an instability that can be extremely violent.A dangerous phenomenon encountered in flexible structures subjected to aerodynamic forces that arise as a result of interactions between aerodynamics, stiffness, and inertial forces. In an aircraft, with the increase of wind speed, there may be a point at which the design structural damping is insufficient to damp out the increasing motions occurring due to addition of aerodynamic energy. This vibration can cause structural failure. Therefore, flutter testing is one of the important phases towards qualification and certification of aircraft flight airworthiness. When flutter problems were experienced in an aerodynamic surface such as horizontal tail during wind tunnel testing, a number of possible methods were studied and evaluated to resolve the observed problem. This paper deals with the experimentation carried out to optimize the flutter speed and presents the experimental setup, results and analysis of the possible design changes.

Keywords: Aeroelasticity, Flutter, Saw tooth, Fluid structure interaction.

---

Back to TOC

FULL TEXT(PDF)