Match Point Solution for Robust Flutter Analysis in Constant-Mach Prediction

This paper presents a method for robust flutter computation which uses flight altitude as the perturbation variable in order to obtain a match point solution. The air density and sound speed of standard atmosphere model are approximated as the polynomial function of altitude, such that the flight altitude becomes the single perturbation variable that describes the aeroelastic system. The uncertainties of generalized stiffness and damping are considered and the uncertain aeroelastic system can be formulated as linear fractional transformation (LFT) representation which is suitable for μ analysis framework. Finally, the match point solutions of robust flutter margins can be computed with structured singular value (SSV) theory. The robust flutter analysis method provided in this paper is suitable for constant-Mach flight flutter test and provides valuable reference for flight envelope expansion.