Flutter and limit cycle oscillations of a cantilevered plate in supersonic/hypersonic flow

Development is ongoing of a new inextensible nonlinear beam and plate model to be used in aeroelastic analysis. Recently, the authors have described the theory and computations of the new structural model and have published data illustrating the responses of a beam to conservative and nonconservative point loads. Presented here is an extension of this structural model coupled with Classical Piston Theory as the aerodynamic model to determine the flutter boundary and post-flutter characteristics of cantilevered beams and plates clamped at the leading edge. Comparisons are made between first and third order Piston Theory, and a new geometric modification is added to piston theory to account for large deflections of the cantilevered configuration. It is shown that this modification increases the stiffening nonlinearity of the model, leading to more stable limit cycles.