High-Speed Fluid-Structure Interactions on a Compliant Panel Under Shock Impingement

This paper reports experimental results of fluid/structure interactions induced by shock impingement on a clamped-free/clamped-free compliant panel in a Mach 5.8 Ludwieg tube. A shock generator is used to statically impinge a shock on the panel with the aim of producing flow-induced vibrations. In turn, these vibrations create an aeroelastic coupling between the panel and the flowfield, which is dominated by the shock-wave/boundary-layer interactions. The influence of the structural compliance and shock impingement strength is assessed by testing a nominally rigid panel and compliant panels with thickness-to-length ratios of 0.0034 and 0.0068 with a shock generator at flow deflection angles of 0, 2, 3, 8, and 10 deg. One of the primary findings of the present work is that the aeroelastic response of the panel tends to shift from a structurally dominated to a fluid-dominated regime, which is sustained by either the freestream fluctuations or the fluid/structure coupling, depending on the structural compliance and shock impingement strength and location. This work is of fundamental nature, and its main goal is to analyze the interactions between high-speed flow and a thin compliant panel of canonical geometry. However, studies like this are crucial to characterize those complex couplings and provide experimental data that can help enhance the accuracy of aeroelastic modeling tools that feed into the design process of supersonic and hypersonic airframes.