Nonlinear Aeroelastic Characteristics of a Supersonic All-Movable Fin with Single or Multiple Freeplay Nonlinearities

Establishing the aeroelastic characteristic of all-movable fins with freeplay nonlinearities is one of the most common problems in the design of supersonic flight vehicles. In this context, this study provided novel points of view on the nonlinear aeroelastic characteristics of an all-movable fin with freeplay nonlinearities in its root. The unsteady aerodynamic model that was employed uses the second-order piston theory considering thickness effects. For a system with multiple freeplay nonlinearities, a discrete scanning method based on the describing function method was established to solve the limit-cycle oscillations (LCOs) and avoid the loss of solutions. Combining this with the time-domain integration method, the influences of the support stiffness at the root of the fin and the freeplay size ratio of the bending and torsional degrees of freedom on the dynamical response of the system were analyzed. The results demonstrate that systems with a single freeplay nonlinearity exhibit two completely different types of LCO, while systems with multiple freeplay nonlinearities exhibit complex dynamical behaviors such as LCO and quasi-periodic and chaotic motions. The path of a quasi-periodic torus breaking into chaos was observed. Furthermore, a harmonic initial condition for the time-domain integration is proposed; this can be used for a quick check of the frequency-domain calculation results.