Aerodynamic Investigation of a Morphing Wing for Micro Air Vehicle by Means of PIV

A wind tunnel tests campaign has been conducted to investigate the aerodynamic flow around a wing morphing to be used in a micro air vehicle. Non-intrusive whole field measurements were obtained by using PIV, in order to compare the velocity and turbulence intensity maps for the modified and the original version of an adaptive wing designed to be used in a micro air vehicle. Four sections and six angles of attack have been tested. Due to the low aspect ratio of the wing and the low Reynold number tested of 6.4 × 104, the influence of the 3D effects has been proved to be important. At high angles of attack, the modified model prevented the detachment of the stream, increased the lift of the wing and reduced the turbulence intensity level on the upper surface of the airfoil and in the wake.

Design Fabrication of Adaptive Wing Structure

This paper presents the design and fabrication work of adaptive wing using hybrid composite based on their structural response to shape memory alloy (SMA) actuation. The objectives of this study include designing a smart morphing wing, validating its structural response through computational and experimental analysis, and studying actuator placement in the adaptive wing. The computational analysis on the structural and aerodynamic performance is done with MSc Patran/Nasran and ANSYS Fluent respectively. The structural response observed is quite similar with computational analysis. From the obtained results, it can be taken that different actuator placement will produce a different profile of camber due to material stiffness and deflection. The actuator placement for the adaptive wing in this study has been found to produce positive camber and improve lift and drag aerodynamic performance.