Journal of Aerospace Engineering

In order to satisfy the defense challenges of the 21st century, more advanced technologies are needed to build aircraft engines that are lighter, compact, and more powerful than existing designs. Turbine blades are highly critical components of an aircraft engine, and high-cycle fatigue is one of the prime reasons for turbine blade failures; thus understanding and prediction of fatigue failure are of the utmost importance. A primary function of the Turbine Engine Fatigue Facility of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Propulsion Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is evaluation of the development of crack initiation and growth in turbine blade components. One major avenue for the inception of a crack under high-cycle fatigue is the use of a shaker table or an applied forcing function imposed by a piezoelectric transducer. In order for a crack to develop in a plate device, one must have appropriate specimen geometry that produces crack initiation. There are many situations where particular plate dimensions are chosen for testing but a crack never initiates even at the designated endurance limit. This paper presents a method, based on finite-element evaluation, that determines if plate geometry does lead to high-cycle fatigue (HCF) cracking. Furthermore, it justifies the use of a concentrated load as a representation for an aerodynamic forcing function. If the method is followed, a researcher can study the crack-growth scenario within the HCF environment.

In this study I present a review of several research directions in the area of mathematical analysis of flutter phenomenon. Flutter is known as a structural dynamical instability that occurs in a solid elastic structure interacting with a flow of gas or fluid, and consists of violent vibrations of the structure with rapidly increasing amplitudes. The focus of this review is a collection of models of fluid-structure interaction, for which precise mathematical formulations are available. The main objects of interest are analytical results on such models, which can be used for flutter explanation, its qualitative and even quantitative treatments. This paper does not pretend to be a comprehensive review of the enormous amount of engineering literature on analytical, computational, and experimental aspects of the flutter problem. I present a brief exposition of the results obtained in several selected papers or groups of papers on the following topics: (1) bending-torsion vibrations of coupled beams; (2) flutter in transmission lines; (3) flutter in rotating blades; (4) flutter in hard disk drives; (5) flutter in suspension bridges; and (6) flutter of blood vessel walls. Finally, I concentrate on the most well-known case of flutter, i.e., flutter in aeroelasticity. The last two sections of this review are devoted to the precise analytical results obtained in my several recent papers on a specific aircraft wing model in a subsonic, inviscid, incompressible airflow.

A review of several research directions in the area of mathematical analysis of the flutter phenomenon is presented in the present study. Flutter is known as a structural dynamical instability, which occurs in a solid elastic structure interacting with a flow of gas or fluid and consists of violent vibrations of the structure with rapidly increasing amplitudes. The focus of this review is a collection of models of fluid-structure interactions, for which precise mathematical formulations are available. The main objects of interest are analytical results on such models, which can be used for flutter explanation, qualitative, and even quantitative treatments of the models. This study does not pretend to be a comprehensive review of the enormous engineering literature on analytical, computational, and experimental aspects of the flutter problem. The entire survey provides a brief exposition of the results obtained in several selected papers or groups of papers on the following topics: (1) Bending-torsion vibrations of coupled beams; (2) flutter in transmission lines; (3) flutter in rotating blades; (4) flutter in hard disk drives; (5) flutter in suspension bridges; and (6) flutter of blood vessel walls. The last topic of the review is devoted to the most well-known cases of flutter, i.e., flutter in aeroelasticity. Namely, the precise analytical results obtained in the author’s several recent papers on a specific aircraft wing model in a subsonic, inviscid, incompressible airflow are discussed.

The ability to create lightweight mirrors that can maintain surface accuracy is a major technical challenge for future space telescopes. Processing-induced errors and surface errors due to temperature excursions and gravity sag (zero gravity in space) make it impossible to correct the surface of thin mirror face-sheets by conventional point actuators. The challenges are compounded by the requirements for mirrors to have adequate stiffness for pointing accuracy. An experimental and analytical study was conducted to explore the feasibility of correcting the shape of lightweight (≈1 kg/m²) mirrors using a “Nitinol” (nickel-titanium) shape memory alloy (SMA). Shape memory alloys are increasingly used as smart devices in aerospace applications. Their primary advantage over other smart materials (i.e., piezo-ceramics and piezo-polymers) is in their ability to undergo large strains and displacements and thus enable the development of smart mechanisms. Active shape correction is the only means of mitigating heat and zero-gravity-induced distortions in space-based optical imaging systems. The repeatability and reliability of a possible actuation system based on properties of the SMA wires were studied by testing the stress-strain and stress recovery behavior under controlled conditions. Embedded SMA wires were then used to actuate a composite beam, and the movement induced by actuation was monitored with the Moiré interferometry method.