Wind tunnel & Flight Test of VCCS Morphing UAV

An aircraft can fly efficiently only in the flight area considered at the time of design. If the shape and aerodynamic characteristics can be changed as necessary, the effective operational range can be expanded. The morphing is defined as change like shape, chord, camber, dihedral angle of wing or configuration of fuselage. This paper presents the development of morphing UAV applied a VCCS morphing wing combined a variable span morphing mechanism and a variable camber variable chord morphing mechanism. This wing has structural characteristics different from the wing of the existing conventional aircraft due to the characteristic of the wing including the morphing mechanism. To verify the effect of the morphing mechanism, an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of configuration morphing and maneuvering morphing was manufactured, and the changing aerodynamic characteristics of the wing according to the application sequence of the morphing mechanism were experimentally confirmed by conducting a wind tunnel test. Through the flight test, the normal operation of the morphing mechanism in the maneuvering situation, flight data acquisition, and stability evaluation were conducted. From the results of the wind tunnel test and flight test, it was possible to confirm the changing aerodynamic characteristics due to the operation of the morphing mechanism, and it was confirmed that the performance was improved when different morphing mechanisms were performed together.