This study is concerned with the design and development of a novel wing for UAVs that morphs seamlessly without the use of complex hydraulics, servo motors and controllers. The selected novel design is characterized by a high degree of flight adaptability and improved performance with a limited added weight. These characteristics were attained through the use of shape memory actuators in an antagonistic fashion. Unlike compliant actuators, the antagonistic setup requires the thermal energy to deform the wing but not to maintain its deformed shape. Structural analysis based upon safety factors specified by FAR23 standards and aerodynamic analysis using FLUENT were conducted on the novel design to validate its suitability as a viable wing for UAVs. In addition, thermal conditioning of the shape memory actuators was conducted using a specially designed programmable controller. This thesis does not concern itself with the design of a skin that accommodates the shape changes.

This study is concerned with the design and development of a novel wing for UAVs that morphs seamlessly without the use of complex hydraulics, servo motors and controllers. The selected novel design is characterized by a high degree of flight adaptability and improved performance with a limited added weight. These characteristics were attained through the use of shape memory actuators in an antagonistic fashion. Unlike compliant actuators, the antagonistic setup requires the thermal energy to deform the wing but not to maintain its deformed shape. Structural analysis based upon safety factors specified by FAR23 standards and aerodynamic analysis using FLUENT were conducted on the novel design to validate its suitability as a viable wing for UAVs. In addition, thermal conditioning of the shape memory actuators was conducted using a specially designed programmable controller. This thesis does not concern itself with the design of a skin that accommodates the shape changes.

No description available.

In order to optimize the flight characteristics of aircraft, wings must be designed for the specific mission an aircraft will see. An airplane rarely has one specific mission, and therefore is usually designed as a compromise to meet many flight objectives with a single wing surface. Large-scale shape change of a wing would enable a wing design to be optimized for multiple missions. Engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center are investigating a new Hyper-Elliptic Cambered Span (HECS) wing configuration that may lead to increased stability and control, and to improved aerodynamic efficiency, during flight. However, during take-off and landing, a conventional wing design (not curved down) may be preferred. Thus a need has been developed for a wing whose contour can be changed during flight. The so-called "morphing" that is required has been limited by a lack of feasible design solutions. One design concept is to use an adaptive structure, with an airfoil skin applied, as the shape-changing driver. Most designs of this kind require multiple actuators to control the changing shape. This thesis introduces a novel design for a morphing wing mechanism using a single degree-of-freedom kinematic chain. In this work, the concept is introduced with sufficient background to aid in understanding. The design tools developed include a synthesis procedure and a sensitivity analysis to determine the effects of manufacturing errors. / Master of Science

The design and implementation of a morphing unmanned aircraft using smart materials is presented. Articulated lifting surfaces and articulated wing sections actuated by servos are difficult to instrument and fabricate in a repeatable fashion on thin, composite-wing micro-air-vehicles. Assembly is complex and time consuming. A type of piezoceramic composite actuator commonly known as Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) is used for wing morphing. The actuation capability of this actuator on fiberglass unimorph was modeled by the Rayleigh-Ritz method and quantified by experimentation. Wind tunnel tests were performed to compare conventional trailing edge control surface effectiveness to an MFC actuated wing section. The continuous surface of the MFC actuated composite airfoil produced lower drag and wider actuation bandwidth. The MFC actuators were implemented on a 0.76 m wingspan aircraft. The remotely piloted experimental vehicle was flown using two MFC patches in an elevator/aileron (elevon) configuration. Preliminary testing has proven the stability and control of the design. Flight tests were performed to quantify roll control using the actuators. Force and moment coefficients were measured in a low-speed, open section wind tunnel, and the database of aerodynamic derivatives were used to analyze control response. / Master of Science

Resumo: O projeto de aeronaves convencionais, em geral, apresentam uma série de dificuldades de se realizar de maneira eficiente um amplo número de missões, uma vez que para atender esses requisitos estas aeronaves deveriam ser capazes de realizar grandes alterações em sua geometria. Surge então um novo conceito de projeto de aeronaves, as chamadas aeronaves adaptativas, as quais são capazes de alterar sua geometria, de modo a adaptar a aeronave a um dado tipo de missão. Este novo conceito se tornou ainda mais atrativo com os avanços tecnológicos promovidos pelo estudo de novos materiais, os chamados materiais inteligentes, que apresentam alta densidade de energia, vantagem que leva a uma redução de peso nos mecanismos atuados desta maneira. Este trabalho apresenta um novo modelo adaptativa, utilizando fios atuadores de ligas de memória de forma para realizar uma rotação relativa entre duas seções de um aerofólio, este mecanismo possibilitaria a variação da linha de arqueamento de uma seção aeronáutica. Neste trabalho uma modelagem matemática para se descrever o comportamento deste sistema é apresentada, bem como um modelo aerodinâmico para se verificar o comportamento do sistema em funcionamento. Um controlador do tipo nebuloso é ainda projetado para se controlar a forma do perfil, e ensaios experimentais são conduzidos para se verificar a modelagem termo-mecânica apresentada. / Abstract: Conventional airplane design, in general, has a large difficulty to attend in an efficient way several mission requirements, once that to attend these requirements the airplane has to perform great shape changes in its structure. Motivated by this problem a new concept in airplane design arise, one called morphing airplanes, which are air vehicles capable of changing its shape to adapt it self to a defined mission. This new concept became even more attractive with the development of active smart material, which can be a high power density actuator, reducing the weight of such morphing mechanism. This work proposes a novel model for morphing wings, using a pair of shape memory alloy wires to create a rotation between two wing sections, this mechanism allows the airfoil to change its camber line. A mathematical model is derived to describe the thermo-mechanical structure behavior, and also an aerodynamic model is investigated. A fuzzy controller is designed to control the system shape, and some experimental tests are used to verify the thermo-mechanical modeling proposed. / Orientador: Vicente Lopes Junior / Coorientador: Carlos de Marqui Junior / Banca: Gustavo Luiz Chagas Manhães de Abreu / Banca: Álvaro Martins Abdalla / Mestre

No description available.

Morphing air vehicles enable more efficient and capable multi-role aircraft by adapting their shape to reach an ideal configuration in an ever-changing environment. Morphing capability is envisioned to have a profound impact on the future of the aerospace industry, and a reconfigurable wing is a significant element of a morphing aircraft. This thesis develops two tools for analyzing wing configurations with multiple geometric degrees-of-freedom: the structural tool and the aerodynamic and structural interaction tool. Linear Space Frame Finite Element Analysis with Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is used to develop the structural analysis morphing tool for modeling a given wing structure with variable geometric parameters including wing span, aspect ratio, sweep angle, dihedral angle, chord length, thickness, incidence angle, and twist angle. The structural tool is validated with linear Euler-Bernoulli beam models using a commercial finite element software program, and the tool is shown to match within 1% compared to all test cases. The verification of the structural tool uses linear and nonlinear Timoshenko beam models, 3D brick element wing models at various sweep angles, and a complex wing structural model of an existing aircraft. The beam model verification demonstrated the tool matches the Timoshenko models within 3%, but the comparisons to complex wing models show the limitations of modeling a wing structure using beam elements. The aerodynamic and structural interaction tool is developed to integrate a constant strength source doublet panel method aerodynamic tool, developed externally to this work, with the structural tool. The load results provided by the aerodynamic tool are used as inputs to the structural tool, giving a quasi-static aeroelastically deflected wing shape. An iterative version of the interaction tool uses the deflected wing shape results from the structural tool as new inputs for the aerodynamic tool in order to investigate the geometric convergence of an aeroelastically deflected wing shape. The findings presented in this thesis show that geometric convergence of the deflected wing shape is not attained using the chosen iterative method, but other potential methods are proposed for future work. The tools presented in the thesis are capable of modeling a wide range of wing configurations, and they may ultimately be utilized by Machine Learning algorithms to learn the ideal wing configuration for given flight conditions and develop control laws for a flyable morphing air vehicle.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-07-27Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:55:32Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 faria_ct_me_ilha.pdf: 2001879 bytes, checksum: 8c06397bc7d8057b53383eaa08ea1d01 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O projeto de aeronaves convencionais, em geral, apresentam uma série de dificuldades de se realizar de maneira eficiente um amplo número de missões, uma vez que para atender esses requisitos estas aeronaves deveriam ser capazes de realizar grandes alterações em sua geometria. Surge então um novo conceito de projeto de aeronaves, as chamadas aeronaves adaptativas, as quais são capazes de alterar sua geometria, de modo a adaptar a aeronave a um dado tipo de missão. Este novo conceito se tornou ainda mais atrativo com os avanços tecnológicos promovidos pelo estudo de novos materiais, os chamados materiais inteligentes, que apresentam alta densidade de energia, vantagem que leva a uma redução de peso nos mecanismos atuados desta maneira. Este trabalho apresenta um novo modelo adaptativa, utilizando fios atuadores de ligas de memória de forma para realizar uma rotação relativa entre duas seções de um aerofólio, este mecanismo possibilitaria a variação da linha de arqueamento de uma seção aeronáutica. Neste trabalho uma modelagem matemática para se descrever o comportamento deste sistema é apresentada, bem como um modelo aerodinâmico para se verificar o comportamento do sistema em funcionamento. Um controlador do tipo nebuloso é ainda projetado para se controlar a forma do perfil, e ensaios experimentais são conduzidos para se verificar a modelagem termo-mecânica apresentada. / Conventional airplane design, in general, has a large difficulty to attend in an efficient way several mission requirements, once that to attend these requirements the airplane has to perform great shape changes in its structure. Motivated by this problem a new concept in airplane design arise, one called morphing airplanes, which are air vehicles capable of changing its shape to adapt it self to a defined mission. This new concept became even more attractive with the development of active smart material, which can be a high power density actuator, reducing the weight of such morphing mechanism. This work proposes a novel model for morphing wings, using a pair of shape memory alloy wires to create a rotation between two wing sections, this mechanism allows the airfoil to change its camber line. A mathematical model is derived to describe the thermo-mechanical structure behavior, and also an aerodynamic model is investigated. A fuzzy controller is designed to control the system shape, and some experimental tests are used to verify the thermo-mechanical modeling proposed.

Submitted by Kilvya Braga (kilvyabraga@hotmail.com) on 2018-04-27T13:03:39Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ANGELO EMILIAVACA - DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGEM) 2016.pdf: 5881090 bytes, checksum: 6d09fd532b88ebec2b8684dfb0e6455f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-27T13:03:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ANGELO EMILIAVACA - DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGEM) 2016.pdf: 5881090 bytes, checksum: 6d09fd532b88ebec2b8684dfb0e6455f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-04 / CNPq / O desenvolvimento da indústria aeronáutica tem provocado alterações significativas nos conceitos atualmente aplicados em aeronaves, sejam elas para fins civis ou militares. Estas mudanças são, em parte, consequência da conscientização ambiental que tem pressionado as indústrias a produzirem aeronaves mais eficientes e menos poluidoras para continuarem competitivas. O impacto destas mudanças sobre o projeto e construção de aeronaves é a busca incessante por conceitos que aumentem a eficiência das aeronaves em um maior espectro de voo sem impactar a segurança e confiabilidade destes sistemas. Neste contexto surge o conceito de aeronaves adaptativas, capazes de se adaptar ao fluxo por mudanças aerodinâmicas sem comprometer a segurança do voo. Um dos conceitos usados em aeronaves adaptativas é o de asa adaptativa, com possibilidade de variação da curvatura do perfil aerodinâmico, o qual é adotado neste trabalho. Estas estruturas apresentam algumas limitações que ainda precisam ser desenvolvidas, como o sistema de atuação, sistema de controle e mecânica estrutural associada à mudança de forma. Baseado nestes aspectos, este trabalho descreve o desenvolvimento de um novo conceito de asa adaptativa, acionada por atuadores do tipo micromolas de liga com memória de forma (LMF). O protótipo desenvolvido, denominado de SMArt Morphing Wing, teve sua estrutura mecânica construída em polímero ABS por impressão 3D e um sistema de “pele” de recobrimento feito em chapa fina de acetato. O protótipo foi testado em vazio e sob carregamento aerodinâmico em túnel de vento, para avaliar a influência da pele e a resposta dos atuadores de LMF sob carga. Nos testes em vazio foram avaliadas as deflexões angulares máximas do protótipo com e sem pele, enquanto que nos testes sob carregamento aerodinâmico entre 6 m/s e 14 m/s, foram avaliadas as deflexões máximas e as forças de arrasto e de sustentação. Adicionalmente, usando a ferramenta computacional ANSYS® CFD, foram feitas análises teóricas do comportamento aerodinâmico do protótipo na condição mais crítica de deflexão e velocidade. A comparação entre os resultados numéricos e experimentais obtidos em túnel de vento revelaram uma boa concordância, confirmando a eficiência do protótipo desenvolvido. / The development of the aeronautic industry has caused significant changes in concepts currently applied in aircraft either for civil or military purposes. These changes are partly due to environmental awareness that has pushed the industry to produce more efficient and less polluting aircraft to remain competitive. The result of these changes on design and construction of aircraft is the incessant search for concepts that increase the efficiency of aircraft in a broader flight range without impacting on the safety and reliability of these systems. In this context arises the concept of adaptive aircraft, which are able to adapt to the flow of aerodynamic changes without compromising flight safety. One of the concepts of morphing aircraft is the morphing wing, with the possibility of variation airfoil camber, which is used in this work. These structures have some limitations that need to be developed as the actuation system, control system and structural mechanics associated with the shape change. Based on these aspects, this work describes the development of a new concept of adaptive wing, driven by shape memory alloy (SMA) micro coil springs like actuator. The prototype, called SMArt Morphing Wing, had its mechanical structure built in ABS polymer for 3D printing and a system of "skin" made of thin sheet of acetate. The prototype was tested unloaded and under aerodynamic loading on the wind tunnel, to evaluate the influence of the skin and the response of SMA actuators under load. In the no load tests were evaluated the maximum angular deflection of the prototype with and without skin, whereas in tests under aerodynamic loading between 6m/s and 14m/s, the maximum deflection, drag and lift forces were evaluated. Additionally, using the computational tool ANSYS® CFD, theoretical analyses of the aerodynamic behavior of the prototype in the most critical condition deflection and speed they were made. The comparison between the numerical and experimental results obtained in wind tunnel showed good agreement, confirming the efficiency of the developed prototype.