IMU-based deformation reconstruction for highly flexible wings

This study presents a deformation reconstruction method for highly flexible wings based on distributed inertial measurement units (IMUs). According to coordinate transformation theory and kinematic formulas, the wing position and attitude equations were derived and wing deformation is obtained through angular velocity and acceleration collected by distributed IMUs. The developed technology will be applied to highly flexible flying wing model, where IMUs are connected to the surface of the wing beam. When the wing is subjected to directional dynamic loads, use the proposed method to calculate wing deformation. Meanwhile, finite element analysis (FEA) is conducted to verify the reconstructed wing deformation. The reconstruction results obtained by the proposed method are in good agreement with the FEA results.