A HIGHER FINITE ELEMENT MODEL IN NONLINEAR PANEL FLUTTER ANALYSIS

The aero-thermoelastic behaviour of the panel substructure of a supersonic vehicle was modelled by a high-order finite element idealisation within the Argyris' natural approach extended to large deflection theory. Two nets of identical topology and material properties create the general non-linear finite element model: one composed of a fifth order triangular plate elements and the other composed of a second order triangular membrane elements (33 degrees of freedom per complex bending/membrane element). The virtues of this new FE model has been demonstrated on the classical example of an isotropic simply supported square panel by a very good solution accuracy achieved with economy of computer memory. NOMENCLATURE a,b,h = panel length, width, and thickness x>y,z = Cartesian co-ordinate fi, £"2, £3 = h°m°geneous co-ordinates u,v,w = displacements /, h, Q = length, height, area of triangle px = arr density