Effect of structural damping on flutter of plates with a follower force

Abstract

A plate-like large space structure may undergo dynamic instabilities when it is thrusted by a nonconservative compressive force. A flexible rectangular plate with four free edges, one of which is subjected to a tangential follower force, is considered. The effects of structural damping are studied here because small damping may destabilize the nonconservative system. The calculation shows that the thrusted free-edged plate with structural damping also has both divergence and flutter types of instability, and the flutter thrust load with small structural damping is drastically lower than that without damping. The destabilizing effect depends on the slenderness ratio of the rectangular plate.