Investigation of attached mass effect on flutter speed of cantilever composite plate in supersonic flow

In this study the vibration behavior of a laminated composite cantilever plate with an attached strip mass was studied. In order to extract flutter speed, the Rayleigh-Ritz method was used by choosing selected shape functions. In this method, strain energy of the plate is calculated and the effect of attached mass is considered as kinetic energy for the system. After reaching an eigenvalue problem then natural frequencies, the force vibration of the plate is analyzed by piston method and flutter speed for each case study is obtained. The effect of the attached mass length is shown. Moreover results have shown that flutter speed was reduced continuously by increasing the mass density. Also by considering a specific laminate with different orientation of layers flutter speed is obtained. At the end attached mass offset from clamped edge is analyzed. In this paper effect of attachment mass, mass length and mass position on plate flutter frequency is analyzed. The results obtained through this study reveal that strip mass density, attached mass length, orientation of composite layers and attached mass position can change the system critical dynamic pressure significantly.