A Study of Panel Thickness Required to Prevent Flutter in Advanced Performance Vehicles

摘要

The purpose of this study is to determine trends of panel thickness needed to prevent panel flutter for the Mach number ranges associated with several typical advanced vehicle trajectories and flight conditions. The local flow conditions, such as local Mach number and local dynamic pressure, together with temperature, angle of attack and other parameters important to panel flutter are presented and discussed. The panel flutter parameters and trends are presented for several typical trajectories of advanced vehicles. A representative radiative corrugation-stiffened panel was assumed to be located on the under side of the vehicles considered in this study. Panel flutter wind tunnel data available for the reference panel and extrapolations to higher Mach numbers are used. The local flow conditions of the several advanced vehicles as determined by oblique shock theory are also used to obtain the trend of thickness required to prevent panel flutter. Panels may experience local Mach numbers up to 24 for some configurations and flight conditions but, based on the results of this study, the most critical speed-range for panel flutter was generally in the transonic and low supersonic region of boosted flight. In some cases, however, the panel thickness to prevent flutter was nearly constant for the free stream Mach number range of 1.4 to 7.0. (Author)