Print Email Facebook Twitter Adaptive aerostructures: The first decade of flight on uninhabited aerial vehicles Title Adaptive aerostructures: The first decade of flight on uninhabited aerial vehicles Author Barrett, R. Faculty Aerospace Engineering Date 2004-07-29 Abstract Although many subscale aircraft regularly fly with adaptive materials in sensors and small components in secondary subsystems, only a handful have flown with adaptive aerostructures as flight critical, enabling components. This paper reviews several families of adaptive aerostructures which have enabled or significantly enhanced flightworthy uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs), including rotary and fixed wing aircraft, missiles and munitions. More than 40 adaptive aerostructures programs which have had a direct connection to flight test and/or production UAVs, ranging from hover through hypersonic, sea-level to exo-stratospheric are examined. Adaptive material type, design Mach range, test methods, aircraft configuration and performance of each of the designs are presented. An historical analysis shows the evolution of flightworthy adaptive aerostructures from the earliest staggering flights in 1994 to modern adaptive UAVs supporting live-fire exercises in harsh military environments. Because there are profound differences between bench test, wind tunnel test, flight test and military grade flightworthy adaptive aerostructures, some of the most mature industrial design and fabrication techniques in use today will be outlined. The paper concludes with an example of the useful load and performance expansions which are seen on an industrial, military-grade UAV through the use of properly designed, flight-hardened adaptive aerostructures. Subject piezoelectricshape memory alloyadaptiveflight controluninhabited aerial vehicle To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:1d15d953-2acc-4cd0-8dc2-7cfb253bc356 Publisher SPIE ISSN 0277-786X Source Proceedings of SPIE, 2004 vol. 5388 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c)2004 Barrett, R. Files PDF AdaptiveBarrett.pdf 325.31 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:1d15d953-2acc-4cd0-8dc2-7cfb253bc356/datastream/OBJ/view