Aeroelastic interaction of the shock waves with the thin-walled composite shells

Abstract The objective of this paper is to develop an adequate approach to the dynamic analysis of the gas–structure interaction for the thin-walled cylindrical composite shells. This includes the modelling of the mechanical process, development of the computational algorithm, and numerical analysis. The mechanical modelling of the nonstationary aeroelastic behaviour of the thin-walled composite shells immersed into a gas media and subjected to the shock wave was considered. The problem was solved for both the general aeroelasticity formulation including the complete system of equations of aerodynamics coupled with the composite shell theory equations and the model reduced to the uncoupled mode. The method based on the explicit treatment of discontinuities in a gas flow was implemented in the solution process. The corresponding computational procedures and algorithms were developed and tested. The results of calculations obtained for both the coupled and uncoupled problems have proved the correctness of the proposed techniques. It was shown that the solution of the problem of aeroelastic interaction between the gas media and cylindrical thin-walled shell in many instances could be obtained using the uncoupled systems of equations with appropriate accuracy for the initial stage of the interaction process. The method proposed in this work can be implemented as an efficient tool for the solution of some related problems such as the analysis of landing or water landing with a view to investigating the dynamic load distribution and the resulting dynamic structural behaviour.