Aerodynamic characteristic of the continuous morphing trailing edge

An existing morphing wing design, known as the Spanwise Morphing Trailing Edge (SMTE) actuated by bending the integrated Macro Fiber Composites (MFCs), is considered to generate spanwise positive and negative absolute valued sinusoidal variations along the trailing edge of the morphing wing. Note that this research is an extension of previous studies on SMTE morphing wing design where the deformation of the trailing edge is parameterized as a function of spanwise location using a simple sinusoidal relationship. A comparative aerodynamic study of the morphing geometries by varying the spatial frequency (i.e., number of waves along the span) and the phase shift (i.e., wave shape along the span) at the pre-stall condition is conducted through numerical computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations. The results show that high spatial frequencies generate vortices along the wingspan, which significantly increases the drag of the wing. These results further show that the SMTE morphing geometries of high aerodynamics performance lie in the region of low spatial frequency independent of the angle of attack.