Abstract:Panel flutter is anaeroelastic phenomenon occurring on the aircraft skin. Acting aslocal structure components on the surface of aircraft, only onesurface of panel is subjected to airflow. Because of the specialconfiguration of panel structure, the bending deflection of panelis strongly confined by its geometrical boundaries, and panelflutter usually exhibits nonlinear behavior with limited amplitudewhich has the same order as the panel thickness. Generally, thepanel flutter will cause fatigue damage rather than rapiddestructive failure of the structure. Therefore, geometricalnonlinearity effect stemming from large deflection should beconsidered in the study of panel flutter problem. For panelflutter problem of hypersonic aircraft, thermal stress induced byaerodynamic heating effect can reduce the bending load carryingcapacity of panel, thus leads to thermal buckling, thermal flutterand more complex dynamic behaviors. The study on panel flutter,especially on panel thermal flutter has both the academic researchand engineering application significance. Panel thermal flutteranalysis considering structural nonlinearity is a widely concernedresearch topic in recent years. In this paper, a historic reviewof panel flutter problems is presented, then the analyticalmodels, numerical solutions of panel flutter are summarized, andtheoretical and experimental results of panel flutter are alsoelucidated. Finally four topics are suggested for future research.