Aeroelastic response and flutter of swept aircraft wings

A unified approach of stability and aeroelastic response of swept aircraft wings in an incompressible flow is developed. To this end, the indicial function concept in time and frequency domains is used, and on this basis the flutter instability and subcritical aeroelastic response to arbitrary time-dependent external excitation are analyzed. In addition, an original representation of the aeroelastic response in the phase space is, presented, and the implications of the related results toward determining the flutter instability in flight are emphasized. Validations of selected results against the theoretical and experimental predictions are supplied, and pertinent conclusions are outlined.