Aeroelastic stability of cylindrical shells interacting with internal annular fluid flow

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the analysis of the dynamic behavior of cylindrical shells, containing an internal annular layer of ideal fluid and subject to the external supersonic gas flow. The aerodynamic pressure is calculated based on the quasi-static aerodynamic theory. The behavior of the compressible fluid is described in terms of the perturbation velocity potential. A mathematical formulation of the problem is developed based on the classical theory of shells and virtual displacement principle. A solution of the problem involves computation of complex eigenvalues of the coupled system of equations. The paper presents the results of numerical experiments, which were performed to estimate the influence of the fluid flow velocity on the value of the static pressure in the unperturbed gas flow for shells, interacting with fluid layers of different thicknesses. The numerical simulation shows that a reduction of the fluid layer thickness and increase of the fluid velocity produce a stabilizing effect by virtue of increasing the threshold of aerodynamic stability. However, an essential reduction of the layer thickness can lead, depending on the preset combinations of boundary conditions, to a considerable growth of the stability threshold or to the onset of instability.