Final Year Project on a Fish-Like Morphing Wing - Rui Wu

Morphing wing can improve aerodynamic efficiency and enlarge flight regime of aircraft. The presented research studied an innovative morphing airfoil concept, which is consisted of two components: The compliant truss structure that allows morphing with multiple degree-of-freedoms but possesses high stiffness when constrained by actuators; the actuation system with linear ultrasonic motor and compliant runners that can fully control the morphing structure. The video clip shows a morphing demonstrator driven by servos.
A discovery has been made from CFD analysis and wind tunnel tests: the ability to morph in different shape changing strategies (thanks to the multiple degree-of-freedoms) further enlarges flight regime, since the strategies outperform each other at different flight conditions. The diagram below shows aerodynamic efficiency across a wide lift regime. It can be seen that the efficiency in the high lift regime can be improved by adapting different morphing strategies. Meanwhile, the research also proved that the pitching moment could be controlled independently of lift in a similar way.