A sailplane with a morphing forward wing section offers a promising performance increase compared to current designs. The morphing shell has to fulfill requirements that differ from those of a conventional shell. It shall adopt the desired aerodynamic shape even in between the ribs which impose the deformation onto the shell. Low actuation work for morphing is favorable and the shell must not buckle or fail under global wing bending. Monolithic balanced ply laminates show promising behavior and are therefore chosen as a baseline. Discrete design variables are fiber angle, ply thicknesses and fiber material. A number of monolithic shell laminates are analyzed with classical laminate theory with regard to membrane and bending stiffnesses. To evaluate all requirements a FEM simulation of a representative wing segment with two rib spacings is performed for six relevant load steps. Deformation work, buckling behavior, actuator reaction forces and aerodynamic performance of resulting airfoil shapes is analyzed from that.     «

A sailplane with a morphing forward wing section offers a promising performance increase compared to current designs. The morphing shell has to fulfill requirements that differ from those of a conventional shell. It shall adopt the desired aerodynamic shape even in between the ribs which impose the deformation onto the shell. Low actuation work for morphing is favorable and the shell must not buckle or fail under global wing bending. Monolithic balanced ply laminates show promising behavior...     »