Morphing aircraft can change external shape in flight according to different flight environments and tasks, and improve flight performance maximumly. Among them, the morphing wing can improve the aerodynamic performance efficiently and has become one of the hot spots in recent years. One of the key technologies for morphing wing is flexible skin technique. Aiming at the conflict between in-plane deformation and out-of-plane bearing capacity of flexible skin structure design, a zero Poisson's ratio hybrid honeycomb structure was designed. The strips are added to the honeycomb structure to form a hybrid honeycomb, which increases the out-of-plane bending stiffness. Three different shapes of honeycomb grid elements were proposed, which are cruciform, square, and H-shaped. By adjusting the shape and size parameters of the three kinds of honeycomb grid elements and the height and quantity of the laying strips, the in-plane deformation mechanism of each element was analyzed by the representative volume element method, as well as the variation of mechanical properties with the element and strip shape parameters. The mechanical properties of the hybrid honeycomb structure were analyzed by finite element simulation. Considering the requirements of the variable camber trailing edge wing, a flexible skin which has capacity of out-of-plane bending resistance was constituted by covering elastic panel over the surface of zero Poisson's ratio hybrid honeycomb. The flexible skin structure has good airtightness and smooth surface. Also, it meets the requirements of in-plane unidirectional deformation along with out-of-plane bearing capacity.

Date Published: 27 March 2019
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 10970, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2019, 109702K (27 March 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2511421

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10970:
Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2019
Jerome P. Lynch; Haiying Huang; Hoon Sohn; Kon-Well Wang, Editor(s)