Supersonic flutter of laminated composite panel in coupled multi-fields

The flutter of a laminate composite panel subjected to aerodynamic, thermal, and acoustic load is investigated in the present study. The von-Karman large deflection plate theory is adopted to account for the geometrical nonlinearities. The third order piston theory is employed to estimate the aerodynamic pressure induced by the supersonic airflow. The acoustic excitation is considered to be a stationary white-Gaussian random pressure with zero mean, and the temperature field is assumed to be a constant in the modeling process. Based on the Hamilton principle, the coupled partial differential governing equations of the panel are established and then the assumption mode method is adopted to truncate the governing equations to a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations, which are then solved by the fourth-order Runge-Kutta numerical integration method. The simulation shows that both the acoustic and thermal loadings have significant effect on the dynamic response of the panel at high acoustic pressure level.