Buckling-driven mechanisms for twisting control in adaptive composite wings

Jiayao Zhang, Chiara Bisagni*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
49 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This study aims to design novel tailorable and effective mechanisms by controlling buckling behaviour in structural elements of a composite wing for future morphing application. Instead of the traditional design against buckling, the idea is to embrace this built-in instability by using the nonlinear post-buckling response to control stiffness changes which redistribute the load in the wing structure. To enable desired multi-stable configurations, three buckling-driven mechanisms are investigated by restraining the out-of-plane buckling deformation using point, area and maximum displacement constraints. Numerical studies of the proposed mechanisms are at first conducted on a composite plate and are later integrated to control twisting of a simplified thin-walled composite wing box. The proposed mechanisms offer effective design opportunities of multi-stable configurations and demonstrate the potential to realise morphing of composite wings employing controlled buckling behaviours in structural components.

Original languageEnglish
Article number107006
JournalAerospace Science and Technology
Volume118
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • Buckling
  • Composite structures
  • Morphing
  • Multi-stable configurations
  • Twisting
  • Wing box

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