Active wing design with integrated flight control using piezoelectric macro fibercomposites

Abstract

Piezoelectric macro fiber composites (MFCs) have been implemented as actuators into anactive composite wing. The goal of the project was the design of a wing for an unmannedaerial vehicle (UAV) with a thin profile and integrated roll control with piezoelectricelements. The design and its optimization were based on a fully coupled structural fluiddynamics model that implemented constraints from available materials and manufacturing.A scaled prototype wing was manufactured. The design model was validated with staticand preliminary dynamic tests of the prototype wing. The qualitative agreementbetween the numerical model and experiments was good. Dynamic tests were alsoperformed on a sandwich wing of the same size with conventional aileron control forcomparison. Even though the roll moment generated by the active wing was lower, itproved sufficient for the intended roll control of the UAV. The active wing withpiezoelectric flight control constitutes one of the first examples where such a designhas been optimized and the numerical model has been validated in experiments.