Morphing Winglet Design for Aerodynamic Performance Optimization of the CRJ-700 Aircraft. Part 1 – Structural Design

Abstract

This study aims to design a morphing winglet structure for the CRJ-700 regional transport aircraft. The morphing technology is applied on winglets to demonstrate a significant increase of the aerodynamic performance of aircraft. From the aerodynamic data of the LARCASE Virtual Research Simulator VRESIM, the aerodynamic benefits in the cruising phase were obtained through a study on the ParaView software. The morphing winglet design was drawn using CATIA V5; this new concept included several structural components, as well as a simple and light mechanism allowing to orientate the winglet angles between 90° and -90° of inclination. The structural model was exported to HyperMesh structural analysis software. Maximum stresses were obtained, and the model demonstrated its resistance to maximum aerodynamic loads as well as load factors of -2G to 7G.

Fluid dynamics study on flight performance improvement of morphing winglets on jetliners

“…In the same study of changeable cant angle winglets on CRJ-700 as mentioned above, the case of 0 degree AOA, flight altitude 30,000 feet, and Mach 0.8, corresponds to the flight parameters when aircraft is cruising at high altitude. The result shows the 0 degree cant angle gives the aircraft highest lift-todrag ratio [8].…”

“…Researchers perform Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study of the aircraft with changeable cant angle winglets flying at altitude 30,000 feet, Mach 0.8, and angles of attack (AOA) of 0 and 4 degrees. It shows that under AOA of 4 degrees, which corresponds to the high Mach number climb scenario, 73 degrees of cant angle offers the aircraft the highest lift-to-drag ratio, and, thus, best high Mach climbing performance [8].…”

Status and Perspectives of Commercial Aircraft Morphing

“…The CRIAQ MDO 505 project focused on developing methodologies for designing adaptive aerodynamic components (winglet and aileron) of a full-scale regional aircraft prototype [ 14 ]. Other studies at the Research Laboratory in Active Controls, Avionics, and Aeroservoelasticity Laboratory (LARCASE) at the École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS) did concentrate on the development of morphing winglet and horizontal tail systems for the CRJ-700 aircraft [ 15 , 16 , 17 ], and the Cessna Citation X business aircraft [ 18 , 19 ]. Currently, AG2, a large European project within the Clean Sky 2 Green Regional Aircraft program, aims at the full-scale, functional flight testing of an adaptive winglet in 2022 [ 20 ].…”