Experimental Identification of Concentrated Nonlinearity in Aeroelastic System

Identification of concentrated nonlinearity in the torsional spring of an aeroelastic system is performed. This system consists of a rigid airfoil that is supported by a linear spring in the plunge motion and a nonlinear spring in the pitch motion. Quadratic and cubic nonlinearities in the pitch moment are introduced to model the concentrated nonlinearity. The representation of the aerodynamic loads by the Duhamel formulation yielded accurate values for the flutter speed and frequency. The results show that the use of the Duhamel formulation to represent the aerodynamic loads yields excellent agreement between the experimental data and the numerical predictions.