Open Access
REVIEW
Recent Progress on Aeroelasticity of High-Performance Morphing UAVs
Binbin Lv, Jun Zha, Kaichun Zeng*, Hongtao Guo, Li Yu and Peng Zhang
Institute of High Speed Aerodynamics, China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center, Mianyang, 621000, China
* Corresponding Author: Kaichun Zeng. Email:
(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Vibration Control and Utilization)
Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2022, 133(1), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2022.020572
Received 01 December 2021; Accepted 07 February 2022; Issue published 18 July 2022
Abstract
The high-performance morphing aircraft has become a research focus all over the world. The morphing aircraft,
unlike regular unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has more complicated aerodynamic characteristics, making
itmore difficultto conduct its design, model analysis, and experimentation. This paper reviews the recent process
and the current status of aeroelastic issues, numerical simulations, and wind tunnel test of morphing aircrafts.
The evaluation of aerodynamic characteristics, mechanism, and relevant unsteady dynamic aerodynamic modeling
throughout the morphing process are the primary technological bottlenecks formorphing aircrafts. The unstable
aerodynamic forces have a significant impact on the aircraft handling characteristics, control law design, and
flight safety. In the past, the structural analysis of morphing aircrafts, flight dynamics modeling, computational
mesh morphing technology, and aerodynamic calculation were performed in promoting the development of next
generation UAVs, with nonlinear dynamic challenges includingtransonic aeroelastic problems and high angle of
attack aeroelastic problems. At present, many facets of these difficulties, together with the accompanying numerical
simulation studies, remain under-explored. In addition, wind tunnel experiments face significant challenges in the
dynamic morphing process. Finally, dynamic unsteady aerodynamic characteristics in the continuous morphing
process still need to be verified by more related experiments.
Keywords
Cite This Article
Lv, B., Zha, J., Zeng, K., Guo, H., Yu, L. (2022). Recent Progress on Aeroelasticity of High-Performance Morphing UAVs.
CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, 133(1), 1–29.