A Conceptual Development of an Active Camber Morphing Airfoil for an Improved Aerodynamic Performance With Flexible Cellular Skin

Abstract Driven by the need to improve the performance and energy efficiency of aircraft, morphing wings became a promising bioinspired solution with its potential to continuously alter the wing shape for optimal efficiency at any flight condition. A primary challenge on the road to this feature is the realization of a flexible skin with a smooth camber variation profile and a high load-bearing capacity in a balanced manner. Within this paper, a new concept of morphing wing design is proposed to meet performance requirements, consisting of a corrugated structure and an internal honeycomb core with a flexible surface bonded on both sides. The equivalent flexible skin is coupled with the skeleton mechanism of the design. The critical dimensions and parameters are optimized through a parametric study based on the 2D finite element model of the design. Subsequently, the computational fluid dynamics method is employed to analyze the aerodynamic performance of the morphing wing design. The present study demonstrates the effectiveness and potential of the proposed camber morphing concept which can be further tested experimentally to assess its performance.