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AIAA 2020-2006
Session: Morphing Structures II
Published Online:https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2020-2006
Abstract:

Throughout nature, the ability to adapt a physical system has been shown to enable the optimization of the system to a number of tasks. Often each adaptation is suboptimal across all tasks which can have conflicting demands therefore requiring specialization to increase performance. One example of such conflict is the physical differences between a vehicle that is efficient at loiter (long wing) versus a vehicle that is efficient at dash (short wing). Small unmanned aerial systems represent excellent test-beds for the development and testing of morphing technologies because of the ability to additively manufacture complex structural members and the relatively small aerodynamic loads of these systems. In order to predict the behavior of an additively manufactured span-wise extending wing section, beams were additively manufactured from RGD 875 and tested under 3-point bending to extract the relevant material behavior. The resulting material properties have been utilized to develop and analyze various span-wise extending wing sections. A prototype wing section was additively manufactured and tested in order to experimentally validate numerical simulations.