Flutter or turbines with multiple unstable modes.

What is it about?

Turbine high-aspect ratio cantilever rotor blades are aeromechanically unstable. Frequently, they undergo flutter in multiple modes with the same frequency. These modes grow exponentially in a first stage which is linear. Then, they saturate non-linearly. The interesting result is that only the most unstable mode survives in the non-linear interaction. This means that for a very long time only a single travelling-wave exists in the final solution if all the blades are identical.

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Why is it important?

This has been demonstrated here for the first time and is important because it allows deriving simple engineering design criteria without performing complex simulations.

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