A Spanwise Differential Variable Camber for Morphing Wings Based on Chiral Metamaterials

Traditional rigid mechanisms used in airfoils often result in gaps and bulges, adversely affecting the aircraft's performance and economy while the continuous variant wing has significant advantages in flight speed and economy due to its aerodynamic shape. However, current research on variant wings focuses more on the design of special deformation mechanisms, without applying metamaterials to the filling structure inside the wing, thus fully leveraging the advantages of metamaterials in the deformation process. To overcome this limitation, this paper presents the design and analysis of a novel spanwise differential variable camber morphing wings device for aircraft applications. The proposed design integrates both rigid and flexible materials in the wing morphing structure. The device is developed based on chiral metamaterials using 3D printing technology. Finite element analysis is utilized to establish the theoretical relationship between the rotation of the steering engines and the resulting wing deflection. Experimental measurements of deflection angles are obtained through the use of scale plates. Comparing the experimental results with the theoretical predictions, a close correlation is observed, validating the effectiveness of the proposed design. This paper provides a new method for the design of flexible variant wings, fully utilizing the advantages of chiral metamaterial structures in the deformation process, and innovatively proposing a new method of filling chiral structures into variant wing structures.