Effect of parameter mismatch and dissipative coupling on amplitude death regime in a coupled nonlinear aeroelastic system

Amplitude death (AD) has been recently identified as a phenomenon that can be exploited to stop unwanted large amplitude oscillations arising from instabilities in engineering systems. These oscillations are a consequence of the occurrence of dynamic instability, for example, the flutter instability, which results in the manifestation of sustained limit cycle oscillations. Recent studies have demonstrated amplitude death in coupled aeroelastic systems with identical parameters using suitable reactive coupling. Deriving impetus from the same, the dynamical signatures of coupled non-identical aeroelastic systems under a variety of coupling characteristics are investigated in the present study. The coupling characteristics between the individual airfoils here are assumed to possess both reactive and dissipative terms and are represented via a linear torsional spring and a damper, respectively. Explicit parameter mismatch is introduced via the use of different structural parameters such as frequency ratio and air-mass ratio for the individual airfoils. We demonstrate that a nonlinear coupled aeroelastic system with parameter mismatch and combined coupling characteristics gives rise to broader regimes of AD in aeroelastic systems. Specifically, the possibility of encountering large amplitude oscillations, usually found with pure reactive coupling can be avoided by adding a dissipative coupling term. On introducing dissipative coupling, the regime of AD was found to increase substantially, for both identical and non-identical scenarios, which in turn aids in serving as an effective tool to be developed further toward the application of flutter instability suppression.