An aeroelastic stability of the circular cylindrical shells containing a flowing fluid

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the analysis of the panel flutter of circular cylindrical shells containing an ideal compressible liquid and subjected to the external supersonic gas flow. The aerodynamic pressure is calculated based on the quasi-static aerodynamic theory. The behavior of the liquid is described in the framework of the potential theory. Using the Bubnov- Galerkin method, the corresponding wave equation together with the impermeability condition and specified boundary conditions are transformed into the system of equations. The classical shell theory based on the Kirchhoff-Love hypotheses and the principle of virtual displacements are used as the mathematical framework for the elastic structure dynamic problem. A solution to the problem is searched for by a semi-analytical version of the finite element method and involves the calculation of the complex eigenvalues of the coupled system of equations using the Muller-based iterative algorithm. The reliability of the obtained numerical solution of the aeroelastic and hydroelastic stability problem has been estimated by comparing it with the available theoretical data. For shells with different dimensions and variants of boundary conditions the numerical experiments have been performed to estimate the influence of velocity of the internal liquid flow on the value of static pressure in the unperturbed gas flow, which is taken as a variable parameter. It has been found that a growth of liquid velocity causes a change in the flutter type of stability loss. It has been shown that with increase of linear dimensions of the shell the stabilizing effect of the internal liquid flow extending the boundaries of aeroelastic stability changes to the destabilizing effect. Specific values of geometrical dimensions determining the variation in the character of dynamic behavior of the system depend on the prescribed combination of boundary conditions.

Keywords

• aeroelasticity
• supersonic gas flow
• potential flow of compressible fluid
• cylindrical shell
• finite-element method
• stability
• flutter