Passive Morphing Airfoil With Honeycombs

Abstract

A passive morphing may improve the aerodynamic characteristics through structural shape change by aerodynamic loads during the flight, resulting in improving fuel efficiency. The passive morphing structure should have a capability to be highly deformed while maintaining a sufficient stiffness in bending. Honeycombs may be good for controlling both stiffness and flexibility. This paper investigates a honeycomb airfoil’s static deformations through the fluid-structure interaction using computational fluid dynamics and structural finite element analysis. The structural performance will be investigated with varying honeycomb geometries including regular, auxetic and chiral meso-structures.