Bifurcations of an airfoil with nonlinear pitching stiffness in incompressible flow are investigated. The pitching spring is regarded as a spring with cubic stiffness. The motion equations of the airfoil are written as the four dimensional one order differential equations. Taking air speed and the linear part of pitching stiffness as the parameters, the analytic solutions of the critical boundaries of pitchfork bifurcations and Hopf bifurcations are obtained in 2 dimensional parameter plane. The stabilities of the equilibrium points and the limit cycles in different regions of 2 dimensional parameter plane are analyzed. By means of harmonic balance method, the approximate critical boundaries of 2-multiple semi-stable limit cycle bifurcations are obtained, and the bifurcation points of supercritical or subcritical Hopf bifurcation are found. Some numerical simulation results are given.
