DYNAMIC STABILITY OF A RECTANGULAR PLATE WITH 4 FREE EDGES SUBJECTED TO A FOLLOWER FORCE

The dynamic stability of a flexible rectangular plate, such as a plate-like large space structure, is analyzed. One of the four free edges of the plate is subjected to a tangential follower force. The plate shows both flutter and divergence instabilities. The flutter load and divergence load are obtained for various slenderness ratios of the rectangular plate by means of modal analysis. In the calculation, many weak instabilities were found; a weak instability sometimes corresponds to a critical load which is significantly smaller than the strong flutter load. The flutter mechanism was studied in depth because the behavior of flutter is fairly complicated with respect to variations in slenderness ratio. Moreover, it was determined that a smaller slenderness ratio is generally desirable to realize a high acceleration of the plate. © 1990 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., All rights reserved.