A Dimensionless Representation of the Turbulence Driven Panel Response

In this paper a summary is presented concerning several experiences in predicting and measuring the structural response under turbulent boundary layer excitations. The theoretical, numerical and experimental evaluations involved both wind tunnel and towing tank (water) tests in which a flow wetted a plane plate over one face. A critical review of all these sets is presented together with the possibility to adopt a dimensionless representation for the response. This is done in order to tentatively compare measurement sets and/or predictive results obtained in nominally different conditions. Specifically, the attention is devoted to the definition of the possible normalisation of the required axes: the excitation frequency and the response metric. To this aim relations suggested by the dimensional analysis are applied to four distinct data sets finding the best choice of dimensionless parameters that allow the collapse of the different curves in a single one. The functional relations between these parameters are discussed and an analytical expression for the dimensionless plate response is obtained.