Design and aerodynamic characteristic analysis of flexible morphing wing based on cellular structure

This paper aims to design a morphing wing with both Flexible Leading Edge (FLE) and Flexible Trailing Edge (FTE) by using cellular structures, which can help the wing boost the deformation to a greater extent on the premise that the weight is not changed, so as to play a greater role in aerodynamic control such as gust interference. First, as for structural design, based on NACA0012, a morphing wing model constructed by 3 forms of cell structures is proposed. Then, the aerodynamic characteristics under the interference of FLE and FTE are calculated by the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) method. After the surrogate model is established to predict the lift coefficient of the wing effectively, the sensitivity analysis reveals that the main sensitivity index of FTE deflection angle β is 0.565, which has the greatest influence on the lift coefficient. And the total sensitivity index of FLE deflection angle γ is increased by 78.9%, which reveals a strong coupling relationship between FLE and FTE. Finally, using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) method and experiment, the deformation capability of the model under certain static loads are obtained. The results reveal that the maximum deflection angle of the morphing wing model can be ±22° at FLE and ±64° at FTE, indicating strong structural stiffness and resistance to bending breakage of the model. The presented results can be useful in the design of the cellular morphing wing with multiple flexible systems.