Abstract
This work introduces a novel method of conducting differential pressure testing on 3D printed Geometrically Anisostrpopic TermOplastic Rubber (GATOR) morphing aircraft skins to explore their response under the combined in-plane stretching and out-of-plane pressure loading that they would experience on an aircraft wing surface, without the complexity of a full wind tunnel test. An airtight, four-sided GATOR skin specimen is tested up to an in-plain stretch ratio of 1.6 and a differential pressure of 0.028 MPa, with force and displacement data supplemented with stereo Digital image Correlation (DIC) measurements of skin strains. The results have produced high-quality data showcasing that this is a feasible method to test the static differential pressure behaviour of GATOR morphing skins. More importantly, though, it has highlighted that at low stretch ratios, there are small local out-of-plane deformations, and at higher stretch ratios, a more even skin deformation can be observed.