Simple Adaptive Planforms For Wings

One of the major constraints in developing practical adaptive wings is that they must be easy to install and maintain and be relatively inexpensive. This constraint implies that some recent proposals for wing “morphing”, such as those that require large geometric movements, will not be installed in a production air vehicle. The approach reported in this paper is to investigate ways of improving aerodynamic performance that do not require large geometric movements. The geometry changes used in the current research are leading and trailing edge “waves’ that have a deflection of 1%–2% of chord.