Vibration and aeroelastic stability analysis of hexagonal honeycomb core sandwich panels in supersonic airflow

Abstract

This work investigates the vibration and aeroelastic stability behavior of honeycomb core sandwich panels with four-side simply supported boundaries in supersonic airflow. The sandwich panel includes a hexagonal honeycomb core layer with equal wall thickness, and upper and lower isotropic face sheets. The quasi-steady first order piston theory is used to model the aerodynamic pressure, and aeroelastic equations are established using Hamilton’s principle and a finite element approach. The effects of honeycomb core parameters on vibration and critical dynamic pressures of the honeycomb core panel are analyzed in two cases: Case 1, the dimensions of the simply supported hexagonal honeycomb sandwich panel is the same as the basic isotropic model; Case 2, the masses of the honeycomb sandwich panels are n(0<n≤1) times of the basic isotropic panel. The results show that the hexagonal honeycomb core can improve the natural frequencies of the panel. The honeycomb core thickness has a major influence on the critical dynamic pressure of the honeycomb sandwich panel, and the cell thickness, the cell angle and internal aspect ratio have no significant effect on the critical dynamic pressure. Compared with the basic isotropic panel, the mass can be reduced by nearly 70% using the honeycomb panel in the condition of the same critical dynamic pressure, which is of great significance to reduce the weight of the aircraft panel.