Jie Yu, Song Chen, Zhang Haibo
DOI Number: N/A
Conference number: IFASD-2024-136
Tensegrity systems are the lightweight self-equilibrium structures that compose of a series of tensioned cables and compressed struts. Of particular interest, adjusting the pretension of the tensegrity can tailor the structural characteristics as needed without a basic configuration change. By changing the length of cables or struts, the tensegrity system can morph while maintaining its inherent strength and stiffness. This makes tensegrity systems an attractive candidate for morphing aircraft wings. In addition, due to the influence of external forces on the stiffness matrix, the deflection analysis of the tensegrity wing after being subjected to aerodynamic forces are nonlinear. In this article, based on the aerodynamic shape of the RV-4 wing, we design a feasible tensegrity morphing wing using the R-cross structures. A numerical example is provided to simulate the aerodynamic load and static deflection on this three-dimensional tensegrity morphing wing under different working condition. The results show that our tensegrity morphing wing is 80% of the weight of the RV4 wing，while they have the comparable static deflection with the rudder angle of 10o.The deflection of the tensegrity morphing wing is smaller than that of the traditional wing under the condition of the rudder angle of 0o. In addition, when the rudder angle has been changed from 0o to 10o, the torsion angle variation of the tensegrity morphing
wing is also smaller than that of the traditional wing, which is 1.5514o and 20.5714o, respectively.