Influence of structural damping on panel flutter.

Abstract

An investigation is made into the various models of structural damping which have been used in the study of supersonic panel flutter. This paper reviews previous work, gives general arguments concerning the properties of viscous and hysteretic representations, and provides illustrations with exact analysis of a rectangular membrane. Numerous examples of the destabilizing effect of damping, for both continuous systems and those having a finite number of degrees of freedom, have been discussed recently, and here it is shown that the membrane can be made unstable through a form of uniform damping which has been used extensively for plate analysis. The question of damping at the boundaries is also considered, and it is concluded that this may prove to be a satisfactory simple model of structural damping suitable for panel flutter analysis.