Numerical investigation into discontinuity-induced bifurcations in an aeroelastic system with coupled non-smooth nonlinearities

Sai Vishal, Ashwad Raaj, Chandan Bose, J. Venkatramani*, Grigorios Dimitriadis

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The present study focuses on investigating the bifurcation characteristics of a pitch–plunge aeroelastic system possessing coupled non-smooth nonlinearities, both in structural and aerodynamic fronts. To this end, a freeplay nonlinearity is considered in the stiffness of the pitch degree-of-freedom. The effects of dynamic stall arising due to large instantaneous angles-of-attackare incorporated using the semi-empirical Leishman–Beddoes aerodynamic model. A systematic response analysis is carried out to discern the bifurcation characteristics of the aeroelastic system considering the airspeed as the system parameter. At low airspeeds, a series of dynamical transitions, including aperiodic responses, occur predominantly due to the structural freeplay nonlinearity while the flow remains attached to the surface of the wing. However, beyond a critical value of airspeed, the system response is dominated by high amplitude pitch-dominated limit-cycle oscillations, which can be attributed to stall flutter. It is demonstrated that the freeplay gap plays a key role in combining the effects of structural and aerodynamic nonlinearities. At higher values of the freeplay gap, interesting discontinuity-induced bifurcation scenarios, such as grazing and boundary equilibrium bifurcations arise due to coupled nonlinear interactions, which can significantly impact the safety of the aeroelastic system.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3025-3051
Number of pages27
JournalNonlinear Dynamics
Volume108
Issue number4
Early online date22 Mar 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The first, second, and fourth authors acknowledge the funding received from SERB—start-up research grant (SRG-2019-000077) from the Government of India and the third author acknowledges the funding received from Wallonie-Bruxelles International, Belgium towards this research.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Keywords

  • Boundary equilibrium bifurcation
  • Dynamic stall
  • Freeplay nonlinearity
  • Grazing bifurcation
  • Stall flutter

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Ocean Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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