Numerical analysis on flutter of Busemann-type supersonic biplane airfoil

The Busemann-type supersonic biplane can effectively reduce the wave drag through shock interference effect between airfoils. However, considering the elastic property of the wing structure, the vibration of the wings can cause the shock oscillation between the biplane, which may result in relative aeroelastic problems of the wing. In this research, fluid–structure interaction characteristics of the Busemann-type supersonic biplane at its design condition have been studied. A theoretical two-dimensional structure model has been established to consider the main elastic characteristics of the wing structure. Coupled with unsteady Navier–Stokes equations, the fluid–structure dynamic system of the supersonic biplane is studied through the two-way computational fluid dynamics/computational structural dynamics (CFD/CSD) coupling method. The biplane system has been simulated at its design Mach number with different nondimensional velocities. Different initial disturbance has been applied to excite the system and the effects of the position of the mass center on the system’s aeroelastic stability is also discussed. The results reveal that the stability of the airfoil in supersonic biplane system is decreased compared with that of the airfoil isolated in supersonic flow and such stability reduction effect should be given due attention in practical design.     

Leaf flutter by torsional galloping: Experiments and model

When wind blows on trees, leaves flutter. The induced motion is known to affect biological functions at the tree scale such as photosynthesis. This paper presents an experimental and theoretical study of the aeroelastic instability leading to leaf flutter. Experiments in a wind tunnel are conducted on ficus leaves (Ficus Benjamina) and artificial leaves. We show that stability and flutter domains are separated by a well-defined limit depending on leaf orientation and wind speed. This limit is also theoretically predicted through a stability analysis of the leaf motion.     

Analysis of several subcycling schemes in partitioned simulations of a strongly coupled fluid-structure interaction

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations are used extensively to calculate the vibration of structures subjected to an internal or external flow. In the case of partitioned FSI simulations, separate flow and structure solvers are used, which requires some kind of coupling between both. The time step in both solvers is typically taken the same, but this unnecessarily leads to long calculation times when the time step is small due to stability reasons in one of the two solvers. Subcycling, the procedure where the time step of one solver is chosen smaller than the time step used in the other solver, may reduce the computational cost of the FSI simulation. The subcycling procedure can be either explicit or implicit, the latter implying the use of coupling iterations in each time step. Contrary to explicit subcycling, no stability analyses of implicit subcycling schemes are found in the literature. In this paper, the temporal stability of the implicit subcycling procedure is investigated. The one-dimensional flow in an elastic cylindrical tube is studied analytically. The results of this analysis are subsequently compared to a partitioned two-dimensional axisymmetric FSI calculation with implicit coupling between the flow and structure solvers.     

Experimental evidence of flutter and divergence instabilities induced by dry friction

Flutter and divergence instabilities have been advocated to be possible in elastic structures with Coulomb friction, but no direct experimental evidence has ever been provided. Moreover, the same types of instability can be induced by tangential follower forces, but these are commonly thought to be of extremely difficult, if not impossible, practical realization. Therefore, a clear experimental basis for flutter and divergence induced by friction or follower-loading is still lacking. This is provided for the first time in the present article, showing how a follower force of tangential type can be realized via Coulomb friction and how this, in full agreement with the theory, can induce a blowing-up vibrational motion of increasing amplitude (flutter) or an exponentially growing motion (divergence). In addition, our results show the limits of a treatment based on the linearized equations, so that nonlinearities yield the initial blowing-up vibration of flutter to reach eventually a steady state. The presented results give full evidence to potential problems in the design of mechanical systems subject to friction, open a new perspective in the realization of follower-loading systems and of innovative structures exhibiting ‘unusual’ dynamical behaviors.     

A Precise Computation of Drag Coefficients of a Sphere

We present a computational method for drag coefficients of axisymmetric bodies. It is a kind of consistent flux method but the introduction of a proper test function enables us to establish an error estimate under some assumption. Applying the method, we obtain drag coefficients of a sphere for Reynolds numbers between 10 and 200, which are found between numerical upper and lower bounds.     

A new method for obtaining the exact solutions of the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations and its applications

In this paper we propose a new method for obtaining the exact solutions of the Mavier-Stokes (NS) equations for incompressible viscous fluid in the light of the theory of simplified Navier-Stokes (SNS) equations developed by the first author^[1,2], Using the present method we can find some new exact solutions as well as the well-known exact solutions of the NS equations. In illustration of its applications, we give a variety of exact solutions of incompressible viscous fluid flows for which NS equations of fluid motion are written in Cartesian coordinates, or in cylindrical polar coordinates, or in spherical coordinates. The project supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China.     

The effect of inertial inhomogeneity on the flutter of a cantilevered flexible plate

We study the effect of adding discrete structural mass on the linear stability of an otherwise homogeneous cantilevered-free flexible plate immersed in uniform axial flow. The methods of Howell et al. that mixed numerical simulation with eigenvalue analysis are simply extended for the present study. An ideal two-dimensional flow is assumed wherein the rotationality of the boundary-layers is modelled by vortex elements on the solid-fluid interface and the imposition of the Kutta condition at the plate's trailing edge. The Euler-Bernoulli beam model is used for the structural dynamics. It is shown that addition of mass to the plate can be either stabilising or destabilising, depending upon the location of the added mass, and how its inclusion modifies the energy exchanges of the corresponding homogeneous structure. Our results therefore suggest a straightforward means by which the critical flow speed at which low-amplitude flutter sets in can be passively controlled in engineering applications.     

LCO flutter of cantilevered woven glass/epoxy laminate in subsonic flow

The paper presents a cantilevered composite wing, aeroelastic characteristics of idealized as a composite flat plate laminate. The composite laminate was made from woven glass fibers with epoxy matrix. The elastic and dynamic properties of the laminate were determined experimentally for aeroelastic calculations. Aeroelastic wind tunnel testing of the laminate was performed and the result showed that flutter, a dynamic instability occurred. The cantilevered laminate also displayed limit cycle amplitude, post-flutter oscillation. The experimental flutter velocity and frequency were verified by our computational analysis.     

Cavitating flows through a cascade of flat plates

The purpose of this research is to consider the flow through a cascade of bluff bodies, behind which there exist cavities, by using the free streamline theory. When the wake extends to infinity, both the free surface and the velocity on the free surface are unknown and the cavitation number cannot be specified arbitrarily. Given the geometry of the cascade, a numerical method is described in which we obtain the shape of the free surface and the cavitation number. We obtain the relationship between the contraction coefficient, cavitation number and drag coefficient.     

Fully coupled fluid–structural interactions using an efficient high resolution upwind scheme

The E-CUSP upwind scheme recently developed by Zha and Hu is extended to the moving grid system and is applied to calculate the flow-induced vibration based on a fully coupled fluid–structure interaction methodology. The scheme is used to calculate the flow-induced vibration of an elastically mounted cylinder, forced pitching airfoil, and an elastically mounted airfoil. The numerical results are compared with experimental data and have demonstrated the accuracy, efficiency and robustness of the new E-CUSP scheme for solving flow-induced vibration problems with moving mesh systems.     

A comment on the paper ‘finite difference methods for the stokes and Navier-Stokes equations’ by J. C. Strikwerda

This work comments on a recent paper by J. C. Strikwerda in SIAM Journal on Scientific and Statistical Computing, in an attempt to clear up the evident confusion regarding the use of a Poisson equation for pressure in incompressible Navier-Stokes solutions.     

Comparative asymptotic analysis of coupled and uncoupled thermoelasticity

The asymptotic solution of the three-dimensional dynamic of coupled thermoelasticity problem (with the mutual influence of the strain and temperature fields taken into account) for an isotropic rectangular plate is used to perform a comparative analysis of the results obtained according to this theory and the theory of temperature stresses. The parameters whose values affect the applicability of these theories and of the applied theory used to solve quasistatic problems of thermoelasticity are obtained.     

Delayed full-state feedback control of airfoil flutter using sliding mode control method

This paper studies the delayed feedback control of flutter of a two-dimensional airfoil using a sliding mode control (SMC) method. The dynamic equation of airfoil flutter is firstly established using the Lagrange method, in which the cubic hardening spring nonlinearity of pitch stiffness is considered. Then, the state equation with time delay is transformed into a standard state equation with implicit time delay by a special integral transformation. Next a nonlinear time-delay controller is designed using the SMC method. Finally the effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through numerical simulations. Simulation results indicate that time delay in the control system has significant influence on the control performance. Control failure may happen if time delay is not considered in control design. The time-delay controller proposed is effective in suppressing the airfoil flutter with either small or large control time delay.     

Design of active flutter suppression and wind-tunnel tests of a wing model involving a control delay

In this study, a delayed controller was designed for active flutter suppression of a three-dimensional wing model. The design of controller can be divided into two steps. At the first step, a short time delay was artificially introduced into the control loop and the dynamic equations of the aeroelastic system with delayed control were converted into a set of delay-free state-space equations by using a state transformation. At the second step, the control law was synthesized by using the theory of optimal control for the delay-free state-space equations. To demonstrate the performance of the delayed controller, the margin of time delay was studied. The numerical results showed that the delayed controller had good robustness with respect to the time delay. Moreover, the delayed controller was digitally implemented and tested for the three-dimensional wing model in NH-2 subsonic wind-tunnel. The experimental results illustrated that the critical flow speed of flutter instability of the wing model could be effectively increased from 36.5 m/s to 39 m/s.     

Solitary wave interactions and reshaping in coupled systems

The interaction of the components of composite solitary waves governed by nonlinear coupled equations is studied numerically. It is shown how predictions of the known exact traveling wave solutions may help in understanding and explaining the process of reshaping seen as head-on and take-over collisions of individual solitary waves. The most interesting results concern the switch in the sign or the periodic modulation of the amplitude of the solitary wave and the direction of its propagation due to collisions.     

Numerical identification of mechanisms triggering 2D choke flutter in transonic fan

Blade vibration may trigger a self-induced aeroelastic instability (flutter). In turbomachinery choke flutter appears when a strong shock-wave chokes the blade passage. The aim of this study is to identify mechanisms responsible for the instability. An innovative methodology relying on the splitting of the emitter and receiver role of the blade is presented. It is successfully applied to 2D linearized RANS computations of choke flutter. The emission splitting shows that the vibration of the blades downstream of the shock-wave generates a backward traveling pressure wave triggering the aeroelastic instability. The reception splitting demonstrates the destabilising contribution of the shock-wave / separated boundary layer interaction. The source of flutter is finally a combination of inviscid (regressive waves) and viscous (unsteady separation) mechanisms.     

A class of fully third-order accurate projection methods for solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations

In this paper, a fully third-order accurate projection method for solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is proposed. To construct the scheme, a continuous projection procedure is firstly presented. We then derive a sufficient condition for the continuous projection equations to be temporally third-order accurate approximations of the original Navier-Stokes equations by means of the local- truncation-error-analysis technique. The continuous projection equations are discretized temporally and spatially to third-order accuracy on the staggered grids, resulting in a fully third-order discrete projection scheme. The possibility to design higher-order projection methods is thus demonstrated in the present paper. A heuristic stability analysis is performed on this projection method showing the probability of its being stable. The stability of the present scheme is further verified through numerical tests. The third-order accuracy of the present projection method is validated by several numerical test cases. The project supported by the China NKBRSF (2001CB409604) The English text was polished by Yunming Chen     

Overlapping grids and multigrid methods for three-dimensional unsteady flow calculations in IC engines

A new computational methodology with emphasis on using an overlapping grid technique and a multigrid method has been developed. The main feature of the present overlapping-grid system is of extended flexibility to deal with three-dimensional complex multicomponent geometries. The multigrid method is incorporated into this technique to accelerate the convergence of the numerical solution. The current scheme has been applied for computations of the laminar flows in the multicomponent configuration of internal combusion engines. The flow is governed by three-dimensional, time-dependent, incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the continuity equation. A time-independent grid system is constructed for the moving boundary, i.e. the moving piston in the engine. This grid system is entirely different from others for the same problem in previous works. The performance of the present method has been validated by comparing the results with those from an equivalent, single-grid method and those from experiments. In addition, the flexibility and potential of the method has been demonstrated by calculating several cases which would be very difficult to be handled by other schemes.     

Flexible shaft whirl induced by dry friction and its stability

This paper is devoted to the study of the whirling phenomena of flexible rotors due to dry friction. The mechanical model used here is a two-degree-of-freedom system in which the rubbing plane is not coincident with the rotating plane of the lumped mass. The characteristic equation of whirl speeds is derived and the whirling modes are obtained. The dynamic stability of each admissible whirling motion is also discussed. The results show that the whirl speeds are always higher than the critical speed of the shaft.     

Linear stability analysis of coupled parallel flexible plates in an axial flow

We study here the linear stability of N identical flexible plates with clamped–free boundary conditions forced by a uniform parallel flow. Flow viscosity and elastic damping are neglected, and the flow around the plates is assumed potential. The shedding of vorticity from the plates’ trailing edges is accounted for by introducing a force-free wake behind each plate. A Galerkin method is used to compute the eigenmodes of the system. We are interested in the effects of the number of plates and their relative distance on the stability property of the state of rest, as well as in the nature and structure of the coupled states. Detailed results are presented for the cases N=2, N=3 and N1.