Colloquia

Summary

As a part of the European unions Clean sky 2 joint undertaking the Aeromo2 group at the university of Twente develops the flexible shear element (FSE) of a morphing winglet. The goal of this new technology is to decrease the CO2, NOx and noise that is emitted by aircraft. The FSE ought to be able to allow for a wing tab bending deformation of ±10° while having high shear stiffness to allow the morphing skin to create a well-defined circular deformation profile to achieve required aerodynamic performance. The goal of this research is to investigate the behavior of the redesigned Aeromo FSE and investigate how the morphing winglet concept performs with the Aeromo FSE while subjected to combined bending deformations and shear loads. Emphasis will be put on the deformation of the skin when the setup is subjected to these boundary conditions.

To achieve the stated goals the morphing winglet concept is tested on a previously designed test rig. During these tests image analysis of the skin is performed to measure its deformation over its length. Furthermore the strain response of the Aeromo FSE is measured during testing. Combined with other sensor outputs like applied forces and deformations an investigation is made into the performance of the morphing winglet concept. The results of these analysis is that the Aeromo FSE performs as required however due to anticlastic behavior of the skin, combined with other effects of other boundary conditions, the skin deformation exceeds the required tolerance on a circular reference contour.