Frequency Response of an Aircraft Wing with Discrete Source Damage Using Equivalent Plate Analysis

An equivalent plate procedure is developed to provide a computationally efficient means of matching the stiffness and frequencies of flight vehicle wing structures for prescribed loading conditions. Several new approaches are proposed and studied to match the stiffness and first five natural frequencies of the two reference models with and without damage. One approach divides the candidate reference plate into multiple zones in which stiffness and mass can be varied using a variety of materials including aluminum, graphite-epoxy, and foam-core graphite-epoxy sandwiches. Another approach places point masses along the edge of the stiffness-matched plate to tune the natural frequencies. Both approaches are successful at matching the stiffness and natural frequencies of the reference plates and provide useful insight into determination of crucial features in equivalent plate models of aircraft wing structures.