Subsonic aeroelastic behaviors of a composite plate with embedded MFC actuators under hygrothermal environment

Abstract

Subsonic aeroelastic effects of train-body skin structures have been intensely attractive among researchers due to the improvement of high-speed train speed. In this article, the aeroelastic behaviors of a laminated composite plate with embedded Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) actuators in hygrothermal environment under the subsonic airflow has been investigated. The Von Karman large deflection theory and the subsonic aerodynamic model based on the Bernoulli's equation are applied in the formulation. The principle of virtual work is adopted to obtain the nonlinear aeroelastic equations of the laminated composite panel with embedded MFC actuators. Subsequently, the Newmark method and Newton-Raphson method are combined to solve the framework in order to capture the nonlinear aeroelastic response of the subsonic laminated panel in time domain. Since the presence of moisture concentrations, temperature rises and applied voltages of the embedded MFC actuators will result in additional stiffness effects on composite panels by inducing prestress, thus change the aeroelastic behaviors of the composite panel, the influences of these main parameters on aeroelastic performance are analyzed. The results show that the aeroelastic flutter velocity of the composite panel gets remarkably deteriorated due to the adverse hygrothermal environment and can be strengthened through the applied voltages and appropriate lamination angles of embedded MFC actuators. Besides, the main findings of this study are the anti-symmetric laminate buckles then changes to an periodic oscillation like the limit-cycle-oscillation while there is no such phenomenon for the symmetric ones.