Fibre Optic Shape Sensing and Load Monitoring of Adaptive Aerospace Structures

The aerospace industry is an ever-evolving field that has seen many technological advances over the past decades. The desire for aircraft to be not only efficient and reliable but also cheaper and safer has brought about many proposals across the industry. One of these advances is towards morphing aircraft wings to make wings lighter, more...

Twist morphing concept based on buckling-driven technologies

A novel twist morphing concept is explored, that exploits the buckling instabilities of slender spar webs integrated into a wing structure to control the twisting response to external loads. The main novelty of the concept is in controlling the effective shear stiffness of the post-buckled slender spar webs through external variable constraints...

In-situ boundary layer transition detection on multi-segmental (a)synchronous morphing wings

This paper presents an experimental method to detect in-situ the location of transition on a multi-segmental trailing edge camber morphing wing during synchronous and asynchronous morphing. The wing consists of six independently morphing segments with two of the segments instrumented with eight embedded piezoelectric sensors distributed...

Assessment of the Measurement Performance of the Multimodal Fibre Optic Shape Sensing Configuration for a Morphing Wing Section

In this paper, with the final aim of shape sensing for a morphing aircraft wing section, a developed multimodal shape sensing system is analysed. We utilise the method of interrogating a morphing wing section based on the principles of both hybrid interferometry and Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) spectral sensing described in our previous work....

Vision-Based Nonlinear Incremental Control for A Morphing Wing with Mechanical Imperfections

Morphing structures have acquired much attention in the aerospace community because they enable an aircraft to actively adapt its shape during flight, leading to fewer emissions and fuel consumption. Researchers have designed, manufactured, and tested a morphing wing named SmartX-Alpha, which can actively alleviate loads while achieving the...

Online Black-box Shape Optimization for a Seamless Active Morphing Wing

Recent trends in aviation highlight the ever-increasing need for fuel economy and sustainability. Active morphing technology can offer significant benefits over conventional wing designs. Inspired by nature, smart morphing technologies enable the aircraft of tomorrow to sense their environment and adapt the shape of their wings in-flight to...

The topology optimization of a compliant variable-camber morphing wing

In conventional aircrafts, lift control is achieved by using flap systems. It would be beneficial if flap systems could be replaced by a variable-camber morphing wing. It has been shown that variable-camber morphing wings can significantly improve the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft due to the smoothness of the surface, making it...

Sensing, actuation, and control of the smartx prototype morphing wing in the wind tunnel

This paper presents a study on trailing edge deflection estimation for the SmartX camber morphing wing demonstrator. This demonstrator integrates the technologies of smart sensing, smart actuation and smart controls using a six module distributed morphing concept. The morphing sequence is brought about by two actuators present at both ends of...

Energy-based aeroelastic analysis of a morphing wing

Aircraft are often confronted with distinct circumstances during different parts of their mission. Ideally the aircraft should fly optimally in terms of aerodynamic performance and other criteria in each one of these mission requirements. This requires in principle as many different aircraft configurations as there are flight conditions, so...

Post-Buckled Precompressed (PBP) piezoelectric actuators for UAV flight control

This paper presents the use of a new class of flight control actuators employing Post-Buckled Precompressed (PBP) piezoelectric elements in morphing wing Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The new actuator relieson axial compression to amplify deflections and control forces simultaneously. Two designs employing morphingwing panels based on PBP...