Flutter suppression of plates subjected to supersonic flow using passive constrained viscoelastic layers and Golla–Hughes–McTavish method

Abstract The present study involves the application of surface viscoelastic damping treatments to remedy panel flutter problems in existing aircraft components in which active control strategies cannot be easily performed. The rationale for such study is the fact that as the viscoelastic materials are often used to solve a variety of resonant noise and vibration problems in aerospace industry, it becomes important to quantify the increase of aeroelastic stability that can be obtained by the inclusion of viscoelastic treatments. The flutter boundaries of the aeroviscoelastic system accounting for the frequency- and temperature-dependent behavior of the viscoelastic material are computed by adopting the so-named Golla–Hughes–McTavish model. Since the inclusion of internal variables in the viscoelastic model leads to an augmented coupled system of equations of motion, a numerical pre-processing is found to be necessary prior to the resolution of the complex eigenvalue problem for the purposes of flutter analysis. After the theoretical foundations, the stability analysis of a three-layer sandwich plate under supersonic flow is addressed. The results show that it is possible to increase the critical flutter speeds of flat panels using surface viscoelastic damping treatments. However, the temperature and the thicknesses of the layers have significant effect on the flutter boundary.