Minimum-mass panels under probabilistic aeroelastic flutter constraints

•Structural optimization for aeroelastic flutter is dictated by an eigenvalue migration problem.•Uncertain boundary conditions can be included in the design process for aerospace panels.•An efficient compromise between safety and structural mass is obtained with RBDO.•The optimal topological distribution of material differs for deterministic and uncertain panels.

Aeroelastic flutter is a dangerous failure mode, and aircraft structural components are designed under a deterministic flutter margin. Meeting this safety factor may result in overly-conservative structures, however, an alternative approach incorporates uncertainties into the computational models, and imposes a maximum allowable flutter probability during the optimization process. This technique is demonstrated for the variable-thickness design of an elastic panel subjected to supersonic flow. A performance measure approach based on the first-order reliability method incorporates probabilistic flutter constraints during the search for a minimum-mass panel. Optimization results are given for uncertainties in the panel's boundary conditions, and for non-deterministic thickness design variables.