Morphing wing design via aeroelastic tailoring

An approach to design an aircraft wing with morphing capabilities employing aeroelastic tailoring is presented. Morphing capabilities are achieved by passive actuation, that is the aircraft wing will adapt itself to improve its performance during the designed flight conditions. The approach consists of an aeroelastic steady-state scheme with aero-structure coupling embedded within a global optimisation. The global optimisation is divided into two levels. At the first level, Mathematical Programming (MP) is used to optimise the wing under structural and aerodynamic constraints. Wing-box panels (skins and spars) are modelled using lamination parameters accounting for their anisotropy. Panels are assumed to be symmetric or mid-plane symmetric laminates with 0, 90, 45 or -45 degree ply angles. Each of the wing-box panels is subjected to a combined in-plane loading under strength, buckling and practical design constraints. At the second level, the actual lay-ups of the wingbox panels are obtained using a Genetic Algorithm (GA), accounting for manufacture and design practices.