Session: 01-02-03 Adaptive and Multifunctional Structures III

Paper Number: 110814

110814 - Bio-Inspired Electronic Skin for Morphing Wings 

Airplane wings are undeniably one of the most critical components of airplanes as they bear aggressive loads, and their design can significantly affect flight efficiency. Modern airplanes adopt a fixed-wing design. Although wing design has evolved substantially during the past century, this rigid architecture has remained unaltered. The wing remains stationary while the airplane loads vary significantly starting from takeoff, moving through turbulence, and landing. Hence, this stationary nature of wings results in inefficient design as they remain static without adapting to the external environment. Contrary to airplanes, birds have the ability to selectively move and flap their wings while in the air. This results in optimal performance as this motion is geared towards energy conservation and aerodynamic drag reduction. Hence, mimicking the avian adaptive wing to design a morphing aircraft wing can help improve aircraft maneuverability, speed, and fuel economy.

Previous research on morphing wing methodologies adopts an open-loop architecture. Here wing morphing occurs without any feedback as morphing is independent of the loads and deformations on the wing. To address these gaps, an adaptive sensory aircraft wing capable of achieving ‘morph-by-feel’ flight is proposed. This involves integrating the wing with bio-inspired flexible sensors and actuators. The flexible sensors provide relevant sensory information based on which the actuators morph the wing’s physical metrics to ensure optimal flight performance.  Hence, a closed-loop wing architecture can be adopted that enables the aircraft wing to adapt optimally to external loads. The first step towards designing the morphing sensory wing is the incorporation of the sensory feature. This involves the integration of a flexible electronic skin (e-skin) into the wing, that can provide sensory data. The research work presented here focuses on the design of this e-skin. The e-skin design exploits the inherent advantages of flexible electronics such as being ultrathin, lightweight and having excellent surface conformality. Numerous biological systems served as an inspiration for the e-skin layout which is fabricated using different microfabrication techniques. Finally, experiments are done to validate the performance of the bio-inspired e-skin.

Presenting Author: Nikhil Ashok The Pennsylvania State University

Presenting Author Biography: Nikhil is an Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. candidate at The Pennsylvania State University working under the guidance of Dr. Xin Ning. He earned his bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kerala in India and completed his Master's in Automotive Engineering from the University of Michigan in December 2017. His research work with Dr. Ning centers around developing multifunctional aerospace structures.

Authors:

Nikhil Ashok The Pennsylvania State University
Xin Ning The Pennsylvania State University