Numerical study of geometric morphing wings of the 1303 UCAV

Abstract

ABSTRACTUnmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) are believed by many to be the future of aerial strike/reconnaissance capability. This belief led to the design of the UCAV 1303 by Boeing Phantom Works and the US Airforce Lab in the late 1990s. Because UCAV 1303 is expected to take on a wide range of mission roles that are risky for human pilots, it needs to be highly adaptable. Geometric morphing can provide such adaptability and allow the UCAV 1303 to optimise its physical feature mid-flight to increase the lift-to-drag ratio, manoeuvrability, cruise distance, flight control, etc. This capability is extremely beneficial since it will enable the UCAV to reconcile conflicting mission requirements (e.g. loiter and dash within the same mission). In this study, we conduct several modifications to the wing geometry of UCAV 1303 via Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to analyse its aerodynamic characteristics produced by a range of different wing geometric morphs. Here we look into two specific geometric morphing wings: linear twists on one of the wings and linear twists at both wings (wash-in and washout). A baseline CFD of the UCAV 1303 without any wing morphing is validated against published wind tunnel data, before proceeding to simulate morphing wing configurations. The results show that geometric morphing wing influences the UCAV-1303 aerodynamic characteristics significantly, improving the coefficient of lift and drag, pitching moment and rolling moment.