Stability of a steady flow guided by flexible walls

Flexible channels conveying fluid may loose stability by divergence or flutter, thus leading to undesirable dynamic behaviour. A lot of investigations have already been done on this subject, each involving structural models expressing a specific type of stiffness. The aim of this contribution is to investigate and compare systematically the influence of various types of structural stiffness on the stability behaviour of the coupled problem. Therefore, a simple, yet general model is built. The fluid is bounded by a rigid and an elastical supported, flexible wall, which exhibits bending and extensional stiffness and considers effects of pre-load. The influence of the various characteristics on the stability of the steady state is discussed and a perturbation approach is used to investigate the influence of small nonlinearities. (© 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)