FLEXURAL OSCILLATIONS OF FLEXIBLE AIRFOILS IN SUBSONIC COMPRESSIBLE FLOWS

This paper presents simple and efficient analytical solutions for unsteady subsonic compressibleflows past flexible airfoils executing low frequency oscillations. These analytical solutions areobtained with a method using velocity singularities related to the airfoil leading edge and ridges.The method has been validated for the pitching and plunging oscillations of the rigid airfoils bycomparison with results based on Jordan’s data for compressible flows and by comparison with thesolutions obtained by Theodorsen, Postel & Leppert and Mateescu & Abdo for incompressibleflows. The method has been applied to obtain efficient analytical solutions for the flexuraloscillations of airfoils in compressible flows, which can be efficiently used in solving aeroelasticproblems.