Flutter boundary prediction of an adaptive morphing wing for unmanned aerial vehicle

We have developed a novel morphing wing design for UAV that makes use of shape memory alloys as actuators. The advantages of the novel design have already been addressed in earlier publications by Meguid and his collaborators. Because of the flexibility of the wing, it is highly desirable to investigate flutter instability. This study addresses flutter instability for our novel morphing wing at low speed considering different morphing wing configurations. Structural dynamics of the wing is obtained using lumped mass method and unsteady aerodynamic based on strip model is used to evaluate the aerodynamic forces and moments. Flutter boundary was predicted using p-k method. The results indicate that the newly designed flexible concept of the morphing wing increases the critical flutter velocity.