Stability analysis of whirl flutter in rotor-nacelle systems with freeplay nonlinearity

Tiltrotor aircraft are growing in prevalence due to the usefulness of their unique flight envelope. However, aeroelastic stability—particularly whirl flutter stability—is a major design influence that demands accurate prediction. Several nonlinearities that may be present in tiltrotor systems, such as freeplay, are often neglected for simplicity, either in the modelling or the stability analysis. However, the effects of such nonlinearities can be significant, sometimes even invalidating the stability predictions from linear analysis methods. Freeplay is a nonlinearity that may arise in tiltrotor nacelle rotation actuators due to the tension–compression loading cycles they undergo. This paper investigates the effect of a freeplay structural nonlinearity in the nacelle pitch degree of freedom. Two rotor-nacelle models of contrasting complexity are studied: one represents classical whirl flutter (propellers) and the other captures the main effects of tiltrotor aeroelasticity (proprotors). The manifestation of the freeplay in the systems’ dynamical behaviour is mapped out using Continuation and Bifurcation Methods, and consequently the change in the stability boundary is quantified. Furthermore, the effects on freeplay behaviour of (a) model complexity and (b) deadband edge sharpness are studied. Ultimately, the freeplay nonlinearity is shown to have a complex effect on the dynamics of both systems, even creating the possibility of whirl flutter in parameter ranges that linear analysis methods predict to be stable. While the size of this additional whirl flutter region is finite and bounded for the basic model, it is unbounded for the higher complexity model.

Studying the Effect of Freeplay on Nose Landing Gear Shimmy Using a Fully Nonlinear Model

Shimmy is a common instability of landing gear systems which has been known for a long time. Yet, it is often studied using simplified dynamic models in which the chief system nonlinearities are neglected. Particularly, the influence of worn components and loose joints manifesting itself as a freeplay nonlinearity has been only touched upon in few works. The present paper utilizes a fully nonlinear landing gear dynamic model to obtain nonlinear stability boundaries and to study the onset, severity, frequency jumps, and mode shifts of the system as a result of the torque link freeplay. Using stability maps in the parameter space and time histories of the oscillations the degrading effect of excessive clearance and wear in the torque links is demonstrated, which in turn offers insights for designing shimmy-free landing gears.

Investigating the route to flutter in a pitch-plunge airfoil with freeplay nonlinearity subjected to input flow fluctuations

Aeroelastic systems with freeplay nonlinearity can exhibit a wide variety of qualitatively different dynamical responses such as limit cycle oscillations and chaos in the pre-flutter regimes. Consequently, the bifurcation scenario in an aeroelastic system with freeplay nonlinearity under uniform flows have received considerable attention in the literature. However, in reality flows are far from deterministic and often possess a small temporal random fluctuations about a mean value. Input flow fluctuations have the potential to alter the stability and give rise to atypical routes to flutter. Indeed, recent studies have shown that under flow fluctuations the aeroelastic systems loses its stability via a regime of oscillations called intermittency. Further, it is observed that the presence of cubic hardening nonlinearity and input flow fluctuations with predominantly long time scales can give rise to “on-off” type intermittency. This dynamical behaviour is attributed to type of nonlinearity and relatively short time scale for the system to stay and exhibit distinct dynamics. Extending the mechanism of intermittency route to flutter in aeroelastic systems with other prominent types of nonlinearities, such as, freeplay have however, received minimal attention in the literature. The present study devotes itself to investigate the response dynamics of an airfoil with freeplay nonlinearity subjected to long time scale input flow fluctuations.