Analysis of Bio-inspired Fishbone Based Corrugated Rib for Adaptive Camber Morphing

Bioinspired active camber morphing is an innovative solution for the aerodynamic performance enhancement of flight vehicles such as Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In the present article, a bio-inspired Fish Bone Active Camber (FishBAC) corrugated rib design concept with and without a spine for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is proposed. The wing model is composed of multiple corrugated ribs and a splitted spar for connecting each rib. The rib geometry is subjected to static structural analysis using ANSYS Finite Element Analysis (FEA) module under the unit load conditions. The deformation modes are first extracted from the solution of the wind tunnel test and the elastically deformed NACA 4412 profile will be used to perform Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) studies as a partly coupled analysis. FishBAC corrugated rib with spine design is a stable structure as inspired from nature species that can withstand elastic and inertial loads. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is performed to compute the coefficient of lift ( C l ), coefficient of drag ( C d ) at different Angle of Attack (AoA) for a modified NACA 4412 airfoil and the pressure loads acting on the deformed shape is extracted. The C l obtained for the modified airfoil at lower AoA is about 60–80% higher and the maximum C l ( C lmax ) is 62% higher than the baseline airfoil. The C d of modified airfoil is reduced about 20% at the AoA α = 3° as compared with the baseline model. The proposed corrugated rib structure has been successfully 3D printed with Polylactic Acid plus (PLA+) material and the wind tunnel testing is done to validate the C l , C d values obtained through CFD simulations and the results are presented.