Static pressure modification for piston theory aerodynamics and its application to the analysis of curved panel flutter

A modification method is proposed for piston theory aerodynamics of a curved panel using its static pressure calculated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This static pressure modified piston theory aerodynamics is then applied to the analysis of the static aeroelastic deformation and flutter stability of a cylindrically curved panel. A comparison is made between the results obtained using the existing curvature modified piston theory aerodynamics and the present static pressure modified piston theory aerodynamics, which shows that when the curvature of a curved panel is small, the static aeroelastic deformations and flutter stability boundaries obtained by both methods demonstrate little difference, while for a curved panel with a large curvature, the region near the leading edge which is pressed lower by the present method is larger and the flutter stability boundary is smaller as compared with those obtained by the curvature modified method, and the discrepancy increases with the increasing of curvature. The proposed method breaks through the small curvature limitation of the existing curvature modified method and enlarges the application range of piston theory in the flutter analysis of curved panels.