Influence of Initial Conditions on the Postcritical Behavior of a Nonlinear Aeroelastic System

The behavior of a nonlinear, non-Hamiltonian system in the postcritical (flutter) domain is studied with special attention to the influence of initial conditions on the properties of attractors situated at a certain point of the control parameter space. As a prototype system, an elastic panel is considered that is subjected to a combination of supersonic gas flow and quasistatic loading in the middle surface. A two natural modes approximation, resulting in a four-dimensional phase space and several control parameters is considered in detail. For two fixed points in the control parameter space, several plane sections of the four-dimensional space of initial conditions are presented and the asymptotic behavior of the final stationary responses are identified. Amongst the latter there are stable periodic orbits, both symmetric and asymmetric with respect to the origin, as well as chaotic attractors. The mosaic structure of the attraction basins is observed. In particular, it is shown that even for neighboring initial conditions can result in distinctly different nonstationary responses asymptotically approach quite different types of attractors. A number of closely neighboring periodic attractors are observed, separated by Hopf bifurcations. Periodic attractors also are observed under special initial conditions in the domains where chaotic behavior is usually expected.