Review of shape-morphing automobile structures: concepts and outlook

Abstract

The continuous drive for increased fuel efficiency and sustained innovation in the automobile industry requires the adoption of radically new technological advances. Road vehicle aerodynamic design is primarily concerned with reduction in the drag and generation of a downforce. Current trends in both aircraft and wind turbine blade design show significant interest in shape-adaptive (morphing) advanced structural concepts for improved aerodynamic performance or the realization of new functionality. Morphing structures are also of interest because they have the potential to create designs of simple construction and reduced mass. However, there is an inherent contradiction between the need to create compliant structures to keep actuator demands low and the requirement for designing stiff load-carrying structures. This highlights the key design challenge for morphing structures. Ways of addressing these conflicting demands include the use of advanced composite materials which have extremely anisotropic stiffness properties or multistable behaviour. This review provides a perspective on recent developments in research on morphing structures and the potential applications for these emerging technologies in automobile aerodynamic design.

Experimental investigation of aerodynamic performance of airfoils fitted with morphing trailing edges

“…Research activities regarding morphing concepts development, demonstrator testing and modelling and optimization design have been carried out and several reviews of relevant morphing concepts are available, see Refs. [4][5][6][7][8], for applications of morphing structures in the aerospace, automotive and wind turbine industries.…”

Modelling and testing of the snap-through process of bi-stable cross-ply composites

“…Bi-stable composite laminates have been proposed as a choice to generate novel morphing structures [11,12]. Hyer et al [1,2,[13][14][15][16][17] predicted the cured shapes of bi-stable laminates at RT developing an approximate theory based on the Rayleigh-Ritz technique assuming strain and displacement fields, and minimising the total potential energy (TPE).…”

Asymptotic homogenization for modeling of wingbox structures

“…Recent advancements in additive manufacturing and 4D printing [1,2] facilitate the fabrication of these structures with wide-ranging architectures and geometries. Such progress renders plates and shells, including sandwich and reinforced structures, particularly attractive for many applications in lightweight construction, aerospace and automotive engineering, naval architecture and marine engineering, nanotechnology, biomedical engineering and sports equipment, e.g [3][4][5][6].…”