Session: 04-06: Morphing Aerospace Applications

Paper Number: 110993

110993 - Dlr Uas Test Platform for Morphing Wings 

In recent decades, a variety of concepts for morphing wings have been investigated. Target aircraft vary from small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to commercial airliners. The main objective of all technologies is to improve the flight efficiency with respect to endurance, flight envelope extension or maneuverability. A comparison between different technologies can be challenging, even when the morphing concepts share the same objectives for an aircraft. Mostly, morphing technology demonstration focus on testing the functionality in extensive ground tests or wind tunnel experiments. The impact of a single technology on the flight characteristic or top-level parameter such as fuel consumptions cannot be determined readily. In addition, the combination of artificial intelligence-based (AI) control with morphing technologies is relatively unexplored, however offers significant potential for flight control improvements. To achieve these scientific goals while mitigating risk, the morphAIR project will conduct scaled flight tests with an UAS. A commercially available platform will be modified to fly as UAS and conduct test flights at DLR National Test Center for Unmanned Flight Systems. The UAS PROTEUS has a span of 2.5m, maximum take-off weight of approximately 30 kg and a maximum flight speed of approximately 300 km/h. The commercially available configuration represents the baseline configuration. This baseline aircraft will be equipped with DLR flight control systems and flight test instrumentation to record general information such as airspeed, fuel consumption and general aerodynamic parameters such as angle of attack and sideslip and pressure information. The reference flight is planned for summer 2023. In addition to the reference flight, concepts for a morphing trailing edge are analyzed, which will be implemented in the UAS wing. The goal of this morphing modification is to allow a smooth contour variation along the span. It is planned as a retro fit solution for the existing wing and will be tested in the next few years. The application of morphing techniques on a small scale UAS offers the possibility to also implement significant modifications to the flight control system of the aircraft and thus directly contribute to the advantage. In this context it will be explored if a combination with AI control allocation for specific aspects (e.g. spanwise deflection variance) can further increase the potential. The setup of the UAS PROTEUS will also be a future test platform for morphing technologies to allow easy and fast testing for simple control surface modifications up to complete and disruptive wing variations. This presentation gives an overview of the project and the demonstrator UAV Proteus. It summarizes the goals of the work on implementing a morphing wing and a modifiable flight control for the UAV and shows first results from aerodynamic estimations and flight test data.

Presenting Author: Martin Radestock German Aerospace Center

Presenting Author Biography: 2012: Diploma in mechatronics at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg
Since 2012: Research engineer at the Instiute of Lightweight Systems
2022: PhD in vibro acoustic of sandwich structures
2023: Vice head of Department Adaptronics
Field of professional interest, research field: structural design of morphing technologies for aircrafts and UAS, topology optimization, compliant mechanisms, acoustical and structural behaviour of sandwich structures
Position: Vice head of department Adaptronics