DLR’s Morphing Activities within the European Network

Abstract

Smart Structures technology called Adaptronics in Germany covers the entire field of making the elastomechanical behaviour of structures adaptable through structural integrated sensors and ac-tuators. Three main objectives are targeted by influencing the elasto-mechanics of structures. These objectives are vibration control, noise reduction and shape control. The latter is directly re-lated to morphing of airframes, thus being a focus of DLR’s aeronautical research programme. DLR initiated the national morphing activities with the project ADIF (Smart structures for wings) which investigated a local profile bump for flow inducement and concepts of variable camber as well as with the project AROSYS (Active Rotor Systems) dealing with adaptive rotor blades for active twist generation. The lessons learned where exploited continuously in different national and international projects up to today. Presently the gapless droop nose for laminar wings oft future civil transport aircrafts is in the focus of investigations at DLR in collaboration with European partners. One driv-ing project is the European funded “Smart Fixed Wing Aircraft” (SFWA) within the “Joint Technol-ogy Initiative” (JTI) where a full-scale ground test for a gapless droop nose is planned in 2014. Again within the JTI the active twist rotor blade is investigated in the project “Green Rotorcraft” with the objective to realize a full scale rotor blade segment with low voltage actuators. This paper gives a survey of the related national and international activities where DLR has been involved in since the mid nineties.