Aeroelastic analysis of cantilever honeycomb sandwich panels subjected to shock impingement in yawed supersonic airflow

Flutter is a critical aeroelastic instability of panel structures under aerodynamic loading, which may cause severe vibration and structural failure in high-speed flight. Most flutter analyses in supersonic are conducted with the traditional stable-flow assumption, and the shock-induced instability subjected to spatially varying aerodynamic pressure remains insufficiently explored. The present study investigates the effects of key structural parameters and shock-related aerodynamic variations on the critical aerodynamic pressure and transient vibration response of the cantilever honeycomb sandwich panel in yawed supersonic flow. In the theoretical model, the first-order piston theory is employed in the pre-shock and post-shock regions separately to estimate the aerodynamic pressure discontinuous flow. The aeroelastic governing equations are derived via Hamilton’s principle based on classical plate theory with von Karman strain-displacement relations, and then spatially discretized using the Galerkin method. The flutter boundary is obtained by solving the resulting eigenvalue problem, followed by a systematic parametric study accounting for structural parameters and shock characteristics. Subsequently, the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method is applied to integrate the governing equations in the time domain, and the vibration response of the panel is analyzed through time history and wavelet transform. This study provides guidance for the aeroelastic stability design and optimization of cantilever honeycomb sandwich panels.