Effect of flexibility on the pitch-heave flutter instability of a flexible foil elastically supported on its leading edge

Abstract

An analytical tool is presented to compute the parametric regions of flutter instabilities of a two-dimensional flexible foil elastically mounted. It is based on a new analytical formulation of the unsteady fluid-estructure interaction valid for small-amplitude oscillations and deformations of the foil immersed in an inviscid fluid. The formulation extends a previous analysis by including the effects of gravity and a second flexural mode, increasing its validity range to much smaller rigidities. The analytical results are validated with available numerical results, capturing the first two natural flexural modes down to values of the stiffness parameter $S$ of order $10^{-1}$. When only passive heave, or only passive pitch, is allowed, the rigid foil is stable, existing an upper stiffness bound for the flexural instabilities, wich become coupled with the spring instability mode for small spring constant increasing the growth rate. These coupled spring (linear or torsional) and flexural instability modes occur below a threshold value of $S$ and above a threshold value of $R$, both depending on the corresponding spring constant. Coupled pitch-heave flutter instabilities of a rigid foil occur in a region below a curve of the parametric plane of the two springs constants that depends on $R$, which shrinks to zero as $R$ decreases. For a flexible foil, the flexural unstable modes become coupled with the springs unstable mode as $S$ decreases from infinity, enlarging the mass ratio range for flutter instability and increasing its growth rate, the more so the smaller the springs constants. The parametric regions for flutter instabilities are easily characterized with the present analytical tool, providing the corresponding frequency and critical flutter velocity. The present results can be useful as a guide in the design of future turbines based on flexible oscillating foils.