Nonlinear Skin Panel Response of High-Speed Vehicles Under Multiphysics Effects

The stability of aerodynamic skin panels is crucial during flight missions of air vehicles operating in supersonic or hypersonic flow regimes, as it directly impacts structural integrity and performance. Panel flutter refers to the phenomenon where self-excited oscillations, induced by aerodynamic forces and thermal effects, occur in flexible structures like aircraft wings or fuselage panels. This paper investigates nonlinear semi-infinite panel flutter, focusing on the effects of temperature and random pressures. The study utilizes von Karman’s large deflection theory for structural modeling to account for the flutter behavior of panels with infinite span. First-order piston theory is applied to solve the aerodynamic aspects of the problem. Galerkin’s method is used to obtain the nonlinear panel flutter response. This approach is thoroughly employed to reveal the dynamic behavior of the panel response under high-speed flows, considering the combined effects of aerodynamics, inertial, thermal, and acoustic factors.