Dynamics and Stability of Camber Morphing Wing With Time-Varying Stiffness

Abstract Morphing wing structures are a promising concept to improve the aircraft performance. Many research works are focusing on the design of mechanism for camber morphing and its aerodynamic performance analysis. However, the dynamic and aeroelastic models of camber morphing wing that can capture the phenomena associated with morphing for performance analysis are not available. This study develops an analytical dynamic model and the solution methods to perform dynamics and stability analysis of camber morphing wing. The change in geometrical and material properties of morphing wing are modeled as time varying stiffness parameters. Floquet theory is then used to study the stability and response of the morphing wing dynamics. The dynamic response and instability regions induced due to aerodynamic flow variations, magnitude and frequency of time varying stiffness (i.e, camber morphing) are identified and quantified with these models. Numerical results show that the morphing process has significant effect on the dynamic response and stability of the camber morphing wing.