Morphing aircraft wings offer great potential benefits of achieving multi mission capability as well as high maneuverability under different flight conditions. However, they present many design challenges in the form of conflicting design requirements. The current research aims to develop design methodologies for the design of a morphing aircraft wing. Focus of this work is on developing an internal mechanism of the wing that can produce the desired wing shape change. This paper presents a design methodology that employs planar unit cells of pre-determined shape and layout as the internal wing structure for achieving the desired wing shape change. This method is particularly useful in cases where the desired morphing is two-dimensional in nature. In such cases, intuitive cell designs such as diamond or hexagonal shaped cells may be used in layouts that achieve desired wing morphing. The shape change depends on the cell shape as well as cell arrangement in the design domain. In this paper, a design based on the TSCh wing (NextGen Aeronautics Inc.) using cellular mechanisms to achieve a two-dimensional wing shape change is discussed. Additionally, a reeling mechanism for achieving cable actuation is presented

Date Published: 18 April 2007
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 6523, Modeling, Signal Processing, and Control for Smart Structures 2007, 652307 (18 April 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.715855

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6523:
Modeling, Signal Processing, and Control for Smart Structures 2007
Douglas K. Lindner, Editor(s)