Abstract: This paper presents a novel mechanical attachment, i.e., nonlinear energy sink (NES), for suppressing the limit cycle oscillation (LCO) of an airfoil. The dynamic responses of a two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) airfoil coupled with an NES are studied with the harmonic balance method. Different structure parameters of the NES, i.e., mass ratio between the NES and airfoil, NES offset, NES damping, and nonlinear stiffness in the NES, are chosen for studying the effect of the LCO suppression on an aeroelastic system with a supercritical Hopf bifurcation or subcritical Hopf bifurcation, respectively. The results show that the structural parameters of the NES have different influence on the supercritical Hopf bifurcation system and the subcritical Hopf bifurcation system.

Key words: null, two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) airfoil, flutter, limit cycle oscillation (LCO) suppression, nonlinear energy sink (NES)