Unconventional Aircraft Morphing Employing Smart Actuators to Enhance Aerodynamic Efficiency

摘要

Conventional flight accomplishes only limited mission objectives, and cannot be optimized for the entire flight envelope. On the contrary, birds can morph their wings to provide optimal performance at all flight conditions. Morphing technology offers aerodynamic proficiency over a wide range of flight conditions, and the key technology that facilitates these adaptive structures is based on smart material actuators. Smart actuators have advantage of high energy density, continuous power output, wide range of motion, high accuracy with good speed characteristics, and the ability to tolerate large amounts of strain. Our study enumerates the development in the applications of smart actuators to morphing aircraft. The objective is to develop an aerodynamically more efficient aerospace vehicle with good control authority. This can be accomplished by using a combination of smart materials and actuators to ensure structural integrity, with reduced weight and enhanced performance. The smart actuators should be studied at molecular level to understand the biological like responsive actuation, or recombination technology (synergetic actuators); to improve the performance of current smart actuators. Nevertheless, optimized structures can be designed using topology optimization methods.