Flutter Characteristic Study of Composite Sandwich Panel with Functionally Graded Foam Core

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate the flutter characteristic of sandwich panel composed of laminated facesheets and a functionally graded foam core. The macroscopic properties of the foam core change continuously along this direction parallel to the facesheet lamina. The model used in the study is a simple sandwich panel-wing clamped at the root, with three simple types of grading strategies for FGM core: (1) linear grading strategy in the chord-wise direction, (2) linear grading strategy in the span-wise direction, and (3) bilinear grading of properties of foam core across the panel. The results show that use of FGM core has the potential to increase the flutter speed of the sandwich panel. Finally, a minimum weight design of composite sandwich panel with lamination parameters of facesheet and density distribution of foam core as design variables is conducted using particle swarm optimization (PSO).