| Summary: | The morphing of aircraft wings for flight control started as a necessity for the Wright Brothers but quickly fell out of favor as aircraft increased speed. Currently morphing aircraft control is one of many ideas being explored as we seek to improve aircraft efficiency, reduce noise, and other alternative aircraft solutions. The conventional hinged control surface took over as the predominant method for control due to its simplicity and allowing stiffer wings to be built. With modern technologies in variable stiffness materials, actuators, and design methods, a morphing control surface, which considers deforming a significant portion of the wing's surface continuously, can be considered.
While many have considered morphing designs on the scale of small and medium size UAVs, few look at it for full-size commercial transport aircraft. One promising technology in this field is the flexible matrix composite (FMC) actuator. This muscle-like actuator can be embedded with the deformable structure and unlike many other actuators continue to actuate with the morphing of the structure. This was demonstrated in the FMC active spoiler prototype, which was a full-scale benchtop prototype, demonstrated to perform under closed-loop control for both the required deflection and load cases.
Based on this FMC active spoiler concept a morphing aileron design was examined. To do this an analysis coupling the structure, fluid, and FMC actuator models was created. This allows for optimization of the design with the objectives of minimizing the hydraulic energy required and mass of the system by varying the layout of the FMC aileron, the material properties used, and the actuator's design and placement with the morphing section.
Based on a commercial transport aircraft a design case was developed to investigate the optimal design of a morphing aileron using the developed analysis tool. The optimization looked at minimizing the mass and energy requirements of the morphing aileron and was subject to a series of constraints developed from the design case and the physical limitations of the system. A Pareto front was developed for these two objectives and the resulting designs along the Pareto front explored. From this optimization, a series of design guidelines were developed. === Ph. D.
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