Stability and bifurcation for limit cycle oscillations of an airfoil with external store

In this paper, stability and local bifurcation behaviors for the nonlinear aeroelastic model of an airfoil with external store are investigated using both analytical and numerical methods. Three kinds of degenerated equilibrium points of bifurcation response equations are considered. They are characterized as (1) one pair of purely imaginary eigenvalues and two pairs of conjugate complex roots with negative real parts; (2) two pairs of purely imaginary eigenvalues in nonresonant case and one pair of conjugate complex roots with negative real parts; (3) three pairs of purely imaginary eigenvalues in nonresonant case. With the aid of Maple software and normal form theory, the stability regions of the initial equilibrium point and the explicit expressions of the critical bifurcation curves are obtained, which can lead to static bifurcation and Hopf bifurcation. Under certain conditions, 2-D tori motion may occur. The complex dynamical motions are considered in this paper. Finally, the numerical solutions achieved by the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method agree with the analytic results.