Aerodynamic Analysis of Camber Morphing Airfoils in Transition via Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

In this paper, the authors analyze an essential but overlooked area, the aerodynamics of the variable camber morphing wing in transition, where 6% camber changes from 2% to 8% using the two airfoil configurations: NACA2410 and NACA8410. Many morphing works focus on analyzing the aerodynamics of a particular airfoil geometry or already morphed case. The authors mainly address “transitional” or “in-between” aerodynamics to understand the semantics of morphing in-flight and explore the linearity in the relationship when the camber rate is gradually changed. In general, morphing technologies are considered a new paradigm for next-generation aircraft designs with highly agile flight and control and a multidisciplinary optimal design process that enables aircraft to perform substantially better than current ones. Morphing aircraft adjust wing shapes conformally, promoting an enlarged flight envelope, enhanced performance, and higher energy sustainability. Whereas the recent advancement in manufacturing and material processing, composite and smart materials has enabled the implementation of morphing wings, designing a morphing wing aircraft is more challenging than modern aircraft in terms of reliable numerical modeling and aerodynamic analysis. Hence, it is interesting to investigate modeling the transitional aerodynamics of morphing airfoils using a numerical analysis such as computational fluid dynamics. The result shows that the SST k-ω model with transition/curvature correction computes a reasonably accurate value compared with an analytical solution. Additionally, the CL is less sensitive to transition near the leading edge in airfoils. As the camber rate changes/is gradually increased, the aerodynamic behavior correspondingly changes linearly in-between.

Enhanced Range and Endurance Evaluation of a Camber Morphing Wing Aircraft

“…The operational condition was Re at 778,179 for the RQ-7a Shadow. Through this, we confirmed the that computational models were sufficiently accurate to run other cases and that the C L and C D were reliable compared to the benchmark data [72,73,77].…”

“…Studies that investigated the performance of morphing aircraft addressed aerodynamical performance aspects such as and as well as flight envelopes for flight dynamics and control [ 27 , 31 , 90 , 91 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 ]. Some representative works of a camber morphing wing aircraft’s aerodynamical characteristics compared their performance to those of conventional wing aircraft [ 72 , 73 ]. However, the flight range and endurance of a camber morphing wing aircraft have been overlooked.…”

“…In the focus of morphing mechanism development, topics such as (1) material selection and analysis [46][47][48][49][50][51], (2) structure and solid mechanics development [50,[52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59], (3) smart materials for actuation [60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67], and (4) conventional actuators for morphing [61,66,67] are primary. In morphing wing analysis regarding design and implementation, (1) analytical or experimental modeling, (2) validation [43,[68][69][70][71], (3) performance and characteristics analysis [72][73][74][75][76][77], and (4) aeroelasticity analysis [78][79][80] are the topics being investigated. Other than those previously mentioned, control systems and flight control and dynamics for morphing wing aircraft [81][82]…”

Design and Analysis of MataMorph-3: A Fully Morphing UAV with Camber-Morphing Wings and Tail Stabilizers

“…Much of the previously published research on aeronautical morphing structures has focused mostly on camber-morphing wings and adaptive trailing-edge technology [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Camber-morphing is a type of out-of-plane morphing that bends the camber line of the airfoil, varying the local lift distribution to control and maneuver the aircraft, essentially converting a low-lift airfoil shape into that of a higher performance, high-lift airfoil.…”

“…Variations of the FishBAC design were presented by Bishay et al [16] as a shape-memory alloy (SMA) actuated tail structure, and by Schlup et al [10] in the tail of MataMorph-2. Jo and Majid [20] recently performed a CFD analysis of a camber-morphing airfoil in transition, and showed that as the camber rate increases, the aerodynamic behavior changes linearly.…”