APPLICATION OF OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES IN THE CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF MORPHING AIRCRAFT

Because of successes in advancing smart materials and adaptive structures, there is a growing interest in "morphing aircraft" that can substantially change their shape during flight to perform in highly dissimilar flight conditions with high efficiency. Important for investigating morphing aircraft is determining which geometric features should be changed and how much these features should be changed. To this end, the "morphing as an independent variable" approach presents a framework in which these questions could be answered. In this paper, an optimization technique is applied to the optimal sizing of a morphing aircraft to demonstrate the morphing as an independent variable approach. For the design mission used in these studies, a morphing aircraft design was found that could complete the mission at a lower takeoff gross weight than a fixed-geometry aircraft, indicating that morphing provides a benefit. The design mission, the morphing as an independent variable approach, and important features of the morphing aircraft sizing code are presented. The use of a genetic algorithm as the search method is discussed. The resulting morphing aircraft description is also examined. Based on this study, some recommendations about future work for conceptual design of morphing aircraft are presented before conclusions about this study.