Added Mass and Aeroelastic Stability of a Flexible Plate Interacting With Mean Flow in a Confined Channel

Abstract

This work presents a review and theoretical study of the added-mass and aeroelastic instability exhibited by a linear elastic plate immersed in a mean flow. We first present a combined added-mass result for the model problem with a mean incompressible and compressible flow interacting with an elastic plate. Using the Euler–Bernoulli model for the plate and a 2D viscous potential flow model, a generalized closed-form expression of added-mass force has been derived for a flexible plate oscillating in fluid. A new compressibility correction factor is introduced in the incompressible added-mass force to account for the compressibility effects. We present a formulation for predicting the critical velocity for the onset of flapping instability. Our proposed new formulation considers tension effects explicitly due to viscous shear stress along the fluid-structure interface. In general, the tension effects are stabilizing in nature and become critical in problems involving low mass ratios. We further study the effects of the mass ratio and channel height on the aeroelastic instability using the linear stability analysis. It is observed that the proximity of the wall parallel to the plate affects the growth rate of the instability, however, these effects are less significant in comparison to the mass ratio or the tension effects in defining the instability. Finally, we conclude this paper with the validation of the theoretical results with experimental data presented in the literature.