UNIVERSAL SCALING FOR THE RESPONSE OF HOMOGENEOUS AND COMPOSITE PANELS EXCITED BY TURBULENT FLOW

Dimensional analysis and energetic considerations are used to determine the functional dependence of the response of homogeneous and composite panels, excited by the turbulent boundary layer, on structural and flow parameters. The derived relations are expressed in dimensionless form providing a general description of the panel response amplitude in the frequency domain. The validity of the theoretical findings is demonstrated using experimental data acquired at full scale and, at model scale, in different facilities (wind tunnels and towing tank), for different flow conditions (Reynolds number values, boundary layer thickness etc.), for different structural materials and characteristic panel dimensions in order to have a significant range of variation of the dimensionless parameters. The basic hypothesis underneath this analysis is to have a fully developed turbulent boundary layer, negligible pressure gradients and a thin flat plate. The results of this study not only yield simple analytical expressions relating the dimensionless panel response and the dimensionless frequency, providing a drastic reduction of the computational burden associated to the numerical solution of the coupled problems, but also offer new physical insights in the mechanisms of structure-fluid interaction