Preliminary airfoil design of an innovative adaptive variable camber compliant wing

Abstract

In this study, an innovative adaptive variable camber compliant wing, with skin that can change thickness and tailing edge morphing mechanism that is designed based on a new kind of artificial muscles, is designed. Consisted of a compliant base plate and seamless and continuous compliant skin with the artificial muscles embedded in, this trailing edge morphing mechanism is extremely light in weight and efficient in reconfiguration of the wing sectional profile. To demonstrate the feasibility of this design, a simulative experiment of this kind of artificial muscles was designed and carried out. A demonstrative wing section with simulative driving skin mechanism and the compliant skin was manufactured. The demonstration wing section shows that the trailing edge morphing mechanism designed and simulative driving skin work good, with a -30°/+30° trailing edge morphing achieved. Targeting this innovative design, an airfoil design approach, employing CST parametric methodology, XFOIL and Multi-Objective Particle Swarm (MOPS) optimizer, is developed for the preliminary design of this innovative wing. A new selector is introduced to facilitate the searching process and improve the robustness of this method. The results show that this method is capable of designing airfoils for this special wing in a quick and effective way.

Impact of Negative Camber for Performance of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

“…Combining the best aspect of both airfoils while rotating is feasible by using an active camber control technique such as morphing wings [24][25][26][27] . In morphing wings, the camber of the airfoil can be actively adjusted using actuators, sensors, and other smart materials.…”

“…The chart shows that using a flipped NACA 2418 blade profile (compared to the standard NACA 2418 profile) results in better power generation in the range of 60° 120°. However, the standard NACA 2418 profile loses less power in the range of 210° to 40°.Combining the best aspect of both airfoils while rotating is feasible by using an active camber control technique such as morphing wings[24][25][26][27] . In morphing wings, the camber of the airfoil can be actively adjusted using actuators, sensors, and other smart materials.…”

Rapid Parametric CAx Tools for Modelling Morphing Wings of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs)

“…Several studies use the adaptive wings CST method to optimise the shape of the airfoil depending on the circumstance of the flight. In [26], this parameterization is used to optimise the endurance of a wing. In reference [27], Gaspari proposes an algorithm to optimise the shape of the CST airfoil taking into account both aerodynamics and the wing structure.…”