The ADAPTIVE WING PROJEKT (DLR): Survey on targets and recent results from active / adaptive structures viewpoint

Kurzfassung

With stronger requirements on ecological and economical aircraft, improvements in highly competitive areas like operational flexibility and costs, flight performance, development potential for stretched aircraft variants and environmental attributes are getting more importance. From take-off to touch-down an aircraft is exposed to changing flight conditions by variations in flight altitude, speed and aircraft weight. For maintaining the optimum lift-over-drag ratio, which is the most important aerodynamic wing characteristic for cruise conditions, the wing profile has to be adapted accordingly. Methods to achieve this are variable camber by increased flap functionality and shock reduction by an adaptive contour (bump) in the shock area. Therefore the object-in-view of the DLR ADAPTIVE WING PROJECT is the realization of a high grade adaptive wing concept for minimization of wing drag and -load with the milestones: - Development and test of methods for influencing subsonic/transonic flows by shock/boundary layer control and variable airfoil shape. - Quantification of aerodynamic/aeroelastic effects of adaptive flaps and profile contour ("bump") for transonic profiles. - Realization of adaptive flaps for variable camber and adaptive bump for shock control by use of multifunctional materials, lightweight structures, integrated actuators/sensors and active/adaptive control. The conclusive test of the aerodynamic, aeroelastic and structural concepts being developed will be the functional concepts capabilities verification on a flight demonstrator at around the year 2005/2006. To achieve the goals set a highly interdisciplinary approach is applied involving the fields of aerodynamics, aeroelastics, structural mechanics and control techniques. In the case of this project this is ensured by a tight toothing between DLR and the German aerospace industry.