Aerodynamic flutter is the unstable oscillation of a body caused by the interaction of aerodynamic forces, structural elasticity and inertial effects induced by vortex shedding. By reducing the complexities of flutter to the shedding of vortices off the tips of a two-dimensional flat plate with a torsional spring constant at its center, this phenomenon can be modeled very efficiently. A discrete vortex model of inviscid flow past a cylinder is transformed through conformal mappings to model the behavior of a flat plate in an impulsively started streamline flow. Results support the potential for utilizing flutter simulations at an early stage in the aircraft design process to mitigate the effects of flutter.
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