Investigating Flow-Induced Vibration by Regarding the Alignment of Flow Modes and Structural Modes

In this work, a modal matching approach is developed to investigate the impact of the spatial correlation of wall pressure fluctuations on structural vibration and its role in suppressing flow-induced vibration in aircraft. The modal matching method defines the wavelength ratio between the convection wave and the flexural wave to capture the spatial characteristics of both the flow mode and the structural mode. In comparison to conventional methods such as the finite element method and analytical method, the proposed modal matching approach allows for obtaining the vibration response in the spatial–wavenumber domain. To validate the spatial correlation effect on structural vibrations obtained with the modal matching approach, a wind tunnel test was conducted to measure flow-induced vibrations. The calculated spatial–wavenumber data for flow-induced vibrations reveal that the crests and troughs of the vibration velocity alternate periodically as the wavelength of the wall pressure fluctuations changes. At the resonance frequency, a vibration velocity trough can be observed when the spatial correlation of wall pressure fluctuations aligns with the structural mode. Additionally, the concept of resonance independence of flow-induced vibrations is introduced to describe the phenomenon where the most severe structural vibration, determined by the matching value between the aerodynamic mode and the structural mode, does not always occur at the resonance frequency. The modal matching approach effectively suppresses structural vibration by utilizing the spatial correlation of wall pressure fluctuations, offering a new perspective on controlling flow-induced vibrations.