Structural Analysis of Morphing Airfoils for Camber Adaptive Wing

The chord-wise bending airfoil wing could be achieved by employing a kind of active morphing skin which was embedded with pneumatic muscle fibers. This camber morphing structure involves the discipline of structural mechanics which is analysed in this paper. Carbon fiber composite plate is utilized for the upper surface skin of the chord-wise bending airfoil structure, so the approach described in this paper starts from deformation analysis of the upper surface skin based on the classical laminate theory. Energy method was also used for solving the shape function of the upper surface skin which was under the condition of pure bending. While the active morphing skin was actuated at a series of discrete actuation pressures, the fixed geometrical shapes of the chord-wise bending airfoil structure could be obtained. Meanwhile the finite element method (FEM) was used for analyzing this chord-wise bending airfoil structure and the deformed shapes of the upper surface skins would be obtained. Deformed shapes of the upper surface skins between numerical analysis result and FEM analysis result were compared in this paper. This structural analysis work provides useful design and camber morphing characteristics for chord-wise bending airfoil structure. Developers of future shape-adaptive air vehicles have been provided with structural design tools.