Control a Morphing Trailing Edge

Abstract

Aircraft designers have been focusing on improving the aircraft flight efficiency, and especially airline companies are anxious to improve the commercial aircraft efficiency nowadays. Usually aircraft wings are designed to be most efficient at cruising flight, but suffer performance penalties under other conditions, such as taking off, landing and controlling flight attitude. Morphing technology, inspired by bird flight enables an aircraft to adapt its shape to enhance mission performance and optimize flight attitude controlling efficiency. This work is aimed at controlling the airfoil camber at the wing trailing edge by producing a smoothed morphed flap upon activation of the smart material (SMA elements), substituting the traditional split hinge flap of the civil regional transportation aircraft.