Analysis of UAS-S4 Éhecatl aerodynamic performance improvement using several configurations of a morphing wing technology

The paper presents the results of the aerodynamic optimisation of an Unmanned Aerial System's wing using a morphing approach. The shape deformation of the wing is achieved by placing actuator lines at several positions along its span. For each flight condition, the optimal displacements are fou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAeronautical journal Vol. 120; no. 1231; pp. 1337 - 1364
Main Authors Şugar Gabor, O., Koreanschi, A., Botez, R.M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.09.2016
Subjects
Actuation
Aerodynamic characteristics
Aerodynamics
Aeronautics
Aircraft
Algorithms
Angle of attack
Automation
Composite materials
Configurations
Deformation
Design
Laboratories
Morphing
Process engineering
Search algorithms
Studies
Swarm intelligence
Turbulence models
Two dimensional flow
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Velocity
Viscous flow
Vortices
nonlinear lifting line method
morphing wing
aerodynamic optimisation
Unmanned aerial system
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Summary:The paper presents the results of the aerodynamic optimisation of an Unmanned Aerial System's wing using a morphing approach. The shape deformation of the wing is achieved by placing actuator lines at several positions along its span. For each flight condition, the optimal displacements are found by using a combination of the new Artificial Bee Colony algorithm and a classical gradient-based search routine. The wing aerodynamic characteristics are calculated with an efficient nonlinear lifting line method coupled with a two-dimensional viscous flow solver. The optimisations are performed at angles of attack below the maximum lift angle, with the aim of improving the Hydra Technologies UAS-S4 wing lift-to-drag ratio. Several configurations of the morphing wing are proposed, each with a different number of actuation lines, and the improvements obtained by these configurations are analysed and compared.
ISSN:0001-9240
2059-6464
DOI:10.1017/aer.2016.61