Impacts of Tapered Wingtip on Lateral-Directional Stability Coefficients of a Morphing Fixed-wing UAV
Abstract
Recent developments in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies have shown the possibility of morphing applications to provide improvement in various performance metrics in the desired manner. In rotary-wing UAVs, applications mainly focused on propeller blades and rotor arms, while efforts on fixed-wing UAVs mainly concentrated on the main wing and tail geometries. Although every morphing design has its own advantages and disadvantages, all of the applications have similar common purposes to have improved aerodynamics, flight performance, control responses, or a combination of such objectives. In that context, new morphing design attempts require a precise investigation of their pros and cons. Thus, in this study, a new morphing scenario of tapering morphing wingtip is applied to ZANKA-I fixed-wing UAV and investigated in terms of lateral-directional stability considerations. The lateral dynamic model of the aircraft is constituted and necessary aerodynamic, geometric, and inertial assessments are numerically and analytically performed. The lateral-directional stability coefficients are discussed and an improvement in lateral stability is obtained, while directional stability is found to be affected negatively by the morphing application.
Keywords
Morphing, Unmanned aerial vehicle, Lateral stability, Directional stability
References
- Afonso, F., Vale, J., Lau, F., and Suleman, A. (2017). Performance based multidisciplinary design optimization of morphing aircraft. Aerospace Science and Technology, 67, 1-12.
- Barbarino, S., Bilgen, O., Ajaj, R. M., Friswell, M. I., and Inman, D. J. (2011). A review of morphing aircraft. Journal of intelligent material systems and structures, 22(9), 823-877.
- Chen, T., and Katz, J. (2004). Induced drag of high-aspect ratio wings. 42nd AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit (p. 38).
- Dimino, I., Andreutti, G., Moens, F., Fonte, F., Pecora, R., and Concilio, A. (2021). Integrated design of a morphing winglet for active load control and alleviation of turboprop regional aircraft. Applied Sciences, 11(5), 2439.
- Eguea, J.P., Bravo-Mosquera, P.D., and Catalano, F.M. (2021). Camber morphing winglet influence on aircraft drag breakdown and tip vortex structure. Aerospace Science and Technology, 119, p. 107148.
- Jo, B.W., and Majid, T. (2023). Enhanced Range and Endurance Evaluation of a Camber Morphing Wing Aircraft. Biomimetics, 8(1), 34.
- Liu, B., Liang, H., Han, Z. H., and Yang, G. (2022). Surrogate-based aerodynamic shape optimization of a morphing wing considering a wide Mach-number range. Aerospace Science and Technology, 124, 107557.
- Millard, J., Booth, S., Rawther, C., and Hayashibara, S. (2022). XFLR5 as a Design Tool in Remotely Controlled Design-Build-Fly Applications. AIAA SCITECH 2022 Forum, 3.
- Nelson, R.C. Flight Stability and Automatic Control, 2nd ed.; WCB/McGraw-Hill Companies, Singapore, 1998.
- Oktay, T., Konar, M., Onay, M., Aydin, M., and Mohamed, M. A. (2016). Simultaneous small UAV and autopilot system design. Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, 88(6), 818-834.
