Adaptive compliant wing

This characteristic is actively pursued in adaptive wings which – by nature of their distributed compliance – can attain shape changes in a continuous, smooth, gap-free manner.

By altering these geometrical parameters, the forces and moments can be modified, permitting to tailor them to the specific flight condition (e.g. for drag reduction) or to perform maneuvers (e.g. roll).

[5] Adaptive compliant wings are also investigated at ETH Zurich in the frame of the Smart airfoil project.

[8] The glass fiber flutter wing should to be flown in 2020, with unstable aeroelastic modes under 55 m/s (107 kn) that must be actively suppressed.

With optimized aeroelastic tailoring and active flutter suppression, an aspect ratio of 12.4 could reduce fuel-burn by 5%, and 7% are targeted.

FLiPASED is also led by MTA SZTAKI and include partners TUM, DLR and French aerospace research agency ONERA.