Technology for Advanced Morphing Structures

The objective of the morphing concept regarding an aircraft is to provide continuous controllable deformations thus changing the stiffness of the structure. A possible solution to design morphing structure can exploit the peculiar characteristics of chiral topologies, which are a relatively new design concept for composite aerospace materials. A honeycomb based on a chiral topology shows auxetic features which leads to negative Poisson coefficients. The word chiral originates from Greek meaning that a structure and its mirror image are not super-imposable. This research investigates the design of a technological demonstrator of a morphing wing that uses the auxetic features of chiral cells. The research is concentrating on the manufacturing of the chiral composite cell network inside a rib. The design of the technological demonstrator is composed of two ribs connected to each other by means of corrugated flexible skin. The recent technological demonstrator is designed as a passive structure but the next step of this research could employ the use of sensing elements and actuators.

The author was born in Izmir, Turkey in 1976. He completed his PhD at Politecnico di Milano Aerospace Engineering Department in 2013. His research interests include but not limited to composite materials, corrosion, fatigue of materials, bio materials and UAVs.