Aeroelastic Stability of Supersonic Composite Fins Considering Thickness Effect

Composite materials offer a combination of stiffness and lightness for structural design of aerial vehicle’s fins and thus have been concerned as proper choices for modern designs. On the other hand, because of the high flexibility of such materials, consideration of the aeroelastic stability and dynamics of the fin are unavoidable in the preliminary stages of new designs. This paper concerned with analysis and study of aroelastic flutter and divergence of supersonic thick fins. Based on calculation of shock and expansion waves on the fin surfaces, the piston theory is locally applied on each surface for the calculation of the unsteady aerodynamic loads. The structural dynamics model of the fin is obtained based on the modal analysis of the finite element model of the composite structure. Combining the aerodynamic and structure models of the fin, the governing aeroelastic equations are derived. The developed aeroelastic model is verified with the available results in the literature and then used for the determination of the instability speed of several example fins by which some parameter studies are performed. The results are presented for various thickness of the fin as well as the layout of the carbon and glass fibers with epoxy matrix.

کلیدواژه ها:

supersonic aeroelasticity ، Local piston theory ، thick composite fin ، fiber orientation