Cable Flutter Analysis of ALFLEX

Abstract

This paper introduces the flutter phenomenon occurring in the automatic landing flight experiment for a Japanese unmanned space shuttle of HOPE-X. The experimental vehicle called ALFLEX which was a dynamically scaled model of HOPE-X was towed by one cable before its release. An oscillation was observed on the cable with release device during flights of towing configuration in the preliminary tests. The analysis revealed that the oscillation was caused by the coupling between unsteady aerodynamic forces of the release device and restoring forces of the cable. The flutter could be eliminated by mass balancing before the automatic landing flight.