STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION OF AN UAV LEADING EDGE WITH TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are used for a wide range of missions, such as monitoring of forest fires or the observation of the climate. In the context of the EU project CHANGE (Combined morphing assessment software using flight envelope data and mission based morphing prototype wing development) the implementation of different morphing mechanisms to extend the endurance and range is investigated, based on a UAV with a span of 4 m. In this paper the design of one of these mechanisms - an adaptive wing leading edge - is presented. The deflection can be reached by use of a compliant mechanism in combination with a conventional linear actuator. Limited design space is certainly a challenge. The advantage of the compliant mechanism is the avoidance of fine mechanics, which always helps towards lightweight designs. A cost efficient manufacturing technique for such structures is additive layer manufacturing, where a compliant mechanism can be built in one step. In the presented approach, the skin of the leading edge is tailored in the first design step. After that, the topology of the inward mechanism is pre-dimensioned with an optimization routine.