A time domain collocation method for studying the aeroelasticity of a two dimensional airfoil with a structural nonlinearity

A time domain collocation method for the study of the motion of a two dimensional aeroelastic airfoil with a cubic structural nonlinearity is presented. This method first transforms the governing ordinary differential equations into a system of nonlinear algebraic equations (NAEs), which are then solved by a Jacobian-inverse-free NAE solver. Using the aeroelastic airfoil as a prototypical system, the time domain collocation method is shown here to be mathematically equivalent to the well known high dimensional harmonic balance method. Based on the fact that the high dimensional harmonic balance method is essentially a collocation method in disguise, we clearly explain the aliasing phenomenon of the high dimensional harmonic balance method. On the other hand, the conventional harmonic balance method is also applied. Previous studies show that the harmonic balance method does not produce aliasing in the framework of solving the Duffing equation. However, we demonstrate that a mathematical type of aliasing occurs in the harmonic balance method for the present self-excited nonlinear dynamical system. Besides, a parameter marching procedure is used to sufficiently eliminate the effects of aliasing pertaining to the time domain collocation method. Moreover, the accuracy of the time domain collocation method is compared with the harmonic balance method. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.