Morphing Structures Technology and Its Application to Flight Control

The common goal of all aerospace advancements is safe, efficient air transportation. Current methods for achieving directional stability—control surfaces such as flaps and ailerons—are heavy and inefficient. If these bulky mechanisms were replaced with an ultra-lightweight morphing structure, efficiency could be increased by cutting drag and weight. In this project, an active truss structure has been designed and tested to examine its load carrying and morphing capabilities. Actuators replace passive members in this structure to achieve shape change. Project goals include modeling, constructing, and deflection analysis of a morphing system. The system is built using a rapid prototype-milling machine at the University of Virginia. An analytical solution to describe the deflection of the structure has been derived and compared with experimental results. Initial results have demonstrated the potential of these structures for use as a control surface.