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Supersonic flutter of composite skin panels of repeated-sublaminate layup

Vijaya, BV and Durvasula, S (1998) Supersonic flutter of composite skin panels of repeated-sublaminate layup. In: Composite Structures, 41 (02). pp. 121-135.

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Abstract

In high-speed aerospace vehicles, supersonic flutter is a well-known phenomenon of dynamic instability to which external skin panels are prone. In theory, the instability stage is expressed by the 'flutter critical parameter' Q(crit), which is a function of the stiffness-, and dynamic pressure parameters. For a composite skin panel, Q(crit) can be maximised by lay-up optimisation. Repeated-sublaminate lay-up schemes possess good potential for economical lay-up optimisation because the corresponding effort is limited to a family of sublaminates of few layers only. When Q(crit) is obtained for all sublaminates of a family, and the sublaminates ranked accordingly, the resulting ranking reveals not only the optimum lay-up, but also the near-optimum lay-ups, which are useful design alternatives, and the inferior lay-ups which should be avoided. In this paper, we examine sublaminate-ranking characteristics for a composite panel prone to supersonic flutter. In particular, we consider a simple supported midplane-symmetrical rectangular panel of typical aspect ratio alpha and flow angle psi, and for four-layered sublaminates, obtain the Q(crit)-based rankings for a wide range of the number of repeats, r. From the rankings, we find that an optimum lay-up can exist for which the outermost layer is oriented wide of, rather than along, the flow. Furthermore, for many lay-ups other than the optimum and the inferior, we see that as r increases, Q(crit) undergoes significant change in the course of converging. To reconcile these findings, eigenvalue-coalescence characteristics are discussed in detail for specific cases.

Item Type: Journal Article
Publication: Composite Structures
Publisher: Elsevier Science
Additional Information: Copyright of this article belongs to Elsevier Science.
Department/Centre: Division of Mechanical Sciences > Aerospace Engineering(Formerly Aeronautical Engineering)
Date Deposited: 15 Dec 2009 09:34
Last Modified: 19 Sep 2010 05:27
URI: http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/19330

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