Abstract
Morphing wings with the ability of shape changing may enlarge the flight envelop of air vehicles. This is particularly important for small-scale aircrafts demanding maneuverability and adaptability in dynamic environments. However, to design a shape-changing mechanism suitable for small drones is very challenging due to extreme requirements raised by dimensional constraint, actuating limits, and weight restriction in Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). A novel design method of morphing wings is proposed for small-scale aircrafts in this paper. The morphing wing is composed of a heterogeneous architecture, including three components: a longitudinal spar with pneumatic actuators, chordwise stiffening ribs with cable-driven metastructures, and a compliant skin. Through employing both pneumatic networks with hyperelastic behavior and modified pantographic metastructures with tunable stiffness, structural deformation along both spanwise and chordwise. Mechanical behaviors of this morphing wing were investigated thoroughly by theorical analysis, numerical verification, and experimental validation. Theorical predictions agree well with the results of 3D Finite Element Method (FEM). With optimal design determined through design of experiment (DOE) and FEM, prototyped morphing wings were fabricated accordingly. The aerodynamic performance was examined by a wind tunnel test with a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) instrument. Results demonstrate the efficiency and capacity of this morphing wing to adjust aerodynamic layout of aircraft in a low-speed airflow environment. This proposed design provides a promising solution applicable to small-scale aircrafts with morphing wings.
Highlights
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) have advantages of good maneuverability, high portability, and outstanding invisibility compared with regular size aircrafts (Ward et al, 2017)
This work developed a novel design of morphing wing to produce smooth and continuous deformation during shape changing
Sensitivities of structural parameters on actuating performance were investigated by design of experiment (DOE) methodology
Summary
Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) have advantages of good maneuverability, high portability, and outstanding invisibility compared with regular size aircrafts (Ward et al, 2017). A deformable wing was developed by employing PBP (post-buckled precompressed) actuators (Vos et al, 2007) This actuator was piezoelectric and distributed along wing span to achieve rolling control for UAVs. A novel flexible-rib system was designed to improve flight performance of small UAVs (Meguid et al, 2017). A novel flexible-rib system was designed to improve flight performance of small UAVs (Meguid et al, 2017) This mechanism was actuated by a servomotor and used to adjust the camber with accurate deformability. The proposed design adopted soft actuators with hyperelastic PneuNets and pantographic metastructures to achieve seamless and continuous deformation in both spanwise and chordwise directions.
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