Actuated adaptive wingtips combine the capabilities of free-flapping and actively adjustable wingtip devices. Pressure-actuated cellular structures (PACS) have been identified as a suitable actuator that meets the functional requirements for actuated adaptive wingtips. This chapter defines design requirements for implementing actuated adaptive wingtips on transport aircraft of different sizes, presents a structural design of a PACS-based wingtip actuator, and verifies the actuated adaptive wingtip concept through aeroelastic analysis. High-fidelity finite element analyses identify the PACS actuator’s maximum deformation and load-bearing capacity, with maximum structural stresses limiting the actuator’s operating envelope. From the actuator’s operating envelope, a physics-based regression model is derived, defining actuator stiffness and moment as functions of the cell pressures. These analytical functions form the basis for incorporating the PACS actuator into an aeroelastic analysis tool based on a reduced beam structure coupled with the vortex lattice method. The PACS actuator meets size and deflection angle requirements for different aircraft classes, but its load-bearing capacity limits maximum aircraft size for a feasible application. Aeroelastic analysis indicates that the investigated PACS actuator, structurally designed from glass-fiber-reinforced plastic, can carry the loads acting on the wingtips of a Cessna Citation X. The adaptive-stiffness hinge, located at 90% semispan, reduces the wing root bending moment by up to 7.8% in a 2.5 g maneuver load case while keeping the wing straight in cruise without a locking mechanism.

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Actuated Adaptive Wingtips on Transport Aircraft

  • Patrick Meyer

摘要

Actuated adaptive wingtips combine the capabilities of free-flapping and actively adjustable wingtip devices. Pressure-actuated cellular structures (PACS) have been identified as a suitable actuator that meets the functional requirements for actuated adaptive wingtips. This chapter defines design requirements for implementing actuated adaptive wingtips on transport aircraft of different sizes, presents a structural design of a PACS-based wingtip actuator, and verifies the actuated adaptive wingtip concept through aeroelastic analysis. High-fidelity finite element analyses identify the PACS actuator’s maximum deformation and load-bearing capacity, with maximum structural stresses limiting the actuator’s operating envelope. From the actuator’s operating envelope, a physics-based regression model is derived, defining actuator stiffness and moment as functions of the cell pressures. These analytical functions form the basis for incorporating the PACS actuator into an aeroelastic analysis tool based on a reduced beam structure coupled with the vortex lattice method. The PACS actuator meets size and deflection angle requirements for different aircraft classes, but its load-bearing capacity limits maximum aircraft size for a feasible application. Aeroelastic analysis indicates that the investigated PACS actuator, structurally designed from glass-fiber-reinforced plastic, can carry the loads acting on the wingtips of a Cessna Citation X. The adaptive-stiffness hinge, located at 90% semispan, reduces the wing root bending moment by up to 7.8% in a 2.5 g maneuver load case while keeping the wing straight in cruise without a locking mechanism.