Probabilistic Flutter Analysis of a Cantilever Wing

A probabilistic flutter analysis of geometrically coupled cantilever wing is carried out using first-order perturbation approach by considering bending and torsional rigidities as Gaussian random variables. The unsteadiness in the aerodynamic flow is modeled using Theodorsen’s thin airfoil theory. The probabilistic response of the wing is obtained in terms of mean, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation (COV) of real and imaginary parts of the eigenvalues at various free stream velocities. The perturbation results are also compared with Monte Carlo simulations. It is observed that the probabilistic response obtained from the perturbation approach is very accurate up to 7% COV in bending rigidity but in the case of torsional rigidity, it starts losing accuracy after 3%.