Introduction to Nonlinear Aeroelasticity

1Introduction

Nonlinear aeroelasticity is the study of the interactions between inertial, elastic and aerodynamic forces on engineering structures that are exposed to an airflow and feature non‐negligible nonlinearity. There exist several good textbooks on linear aeroelasticity for aircraft (Bisplinghoff et al. 1996; Fung 1993; Hodges and Alvin Pierce 2002; Wright and Cooper 2015). Dowell (2004) even includes chapters on nonlinear aeroelasticity and stall flutter, while Paidoussis et al. (2011) discusses a number of nonlinear aeroelastic phenomena occurring in civil engineering structures. However, there is no introductory text that presents the methodologies of nonlinear dynamics and applies them to a wide range of nonlinear aeroelastic systems. The present book aims to fill this gap to a certain degree. The subject area is vast and mutlidisciplinary and it would be impossible to fit every aspect of it in a textbook. The main omission is high fidelity numerical simulation using Computational Fluid Dynamics and Computational Structural Dynamics solvers; these methodologies are already the subject of a dedicated text (Bazilevs et al. 2013). The aerodynamic models used in this book are analytical, empirical or based on panel methods while the structural models are either analytical or make use of series solutions.

The book is introductory but it assumes knowledge of structural dynamics, aerodynamics and some linear aeroelasticity. The main linear aeroelastic phenomena of flutter ...