Studies for aeroelastic characteristics and nonlinear response of FG-CNT reinforced composite panel considering the transient heat conduction

A solution of computing the aero-thermal-elastic problem of FG-CNT reinforced composite panel is proposed, in which the aerodynamic heating and transient heat conduction are accounted for. The Von-Karman theory and the third-order piston theory are employed to establish the motion equation of FG-CNT panel, where the thermo-mechanical properties of polymer matrix and carbon nanotubes are set to be location- and temperature-dependent. The Ecker's reference temperature method and heat flux equation are adopted to calculate the heat flux. Two dimensional transient heat conduction including in-plane and through-thickness directions are computed using a finite difference approach. In the calculation process, the influence of elastic deformation on the aero-heating and aero-heating on panel stiffness is included. The aeroelastic stability analysis is presented for the influential parameters such as CNT volume fraction, distribution and aspect ratio of the panel. Moreover, the effects of the oblique shock wave parameters on the critical flutter pressure and dynamic response are discussed. Numerical results show that the coupled solution leads to the inhomogeneous aero-heating, which results in nonuniform temperature distributions and material property degradations. Consequently, the stability boundary and dynamic response are varied with respect to the case without considering the coupling effect.