Flutter of perforated metallic plates reinforced with segmented piezoelectric patches

Abstract

Abstract – The performance of segmented piezoelectric actuator in controlling the flutter of a damaged metallic plate is presented in this study. Numerical studies using commercial finite element software were conducted to investigate the effect of different parameters such as configuration, mass and voltage of segmented piezoelectric patches on flutter velocity of the repaired plate. The main goal of this study is to investigate the application of piezoelectric actuator to repair the metallic plate with square central cutout. Such study is important since it provides the necessary design information for flutter behavior of repaired perforated plates. Particular emphasis is placed on the flutter analysis of a square aluminum plate. Four different configurations for piezoelectric patches are considered. Both symmetric and un-symmetric patches are considered. The result presented here indicated that, the configuration in which, four piezoelectric patches are placed in a cross shape is more effective than the other configurations in increasing the flutter velocity.