Nonlinear aeroelastic analysis of airfoils: bifurcation and chaos

Different types of structural and aerodynamic nonlinearities commonly encountered in aeronautical engineering are discussed. The equations of motion of a two-dimensional airfoil oscillating in pitch and plunge are derived for a structural nonlinearity using subsonic aerodynamics theory. Three classical nonlinearities, namely, cubic, freeplay and hysteresis are investigated in some detail. The governing equations are reduced to a set of ordinary differential equations suitable for numerical simulations and analytical investigation of the system stability. The onset of Hopf-bifurcation, and amplitudes and frequencies of limit cycle oscillations are investigated, with examples given for a cubic hardening spring. For various geometries of the freeplay, bifurcations and chaos are discussed via the phase plane, Poincaré maps, and Lyapunov spectrum. The route to chaos is investigated from bifurcation diagrams, and for the freeplay nonlinearity it is shown that frequency doubling is the most commonly observed route. Examples of aerodynamic nonlinearities arising from transonic flow and dynamic stall are discussed, and special attention is paid to numerical simulation results for dynamic stall using a time-synthesized method for the unsteady aerodynamics. The assumption of uniform flow is usually not met in practice since perturbations in velocities are encountered in flight. Longitudinal atmospheric turbulence is introduced to show its effect on both the flutter boundary and the onset of Hopf-bifurcation for a cubic restoring force.