Paneled Morphing Skins for A Full Shape Adaptive System

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A full shape adaptive system, such as morphing wings, should contain a morphing structure covered by a morphing skin. In my last DG research, a methodology for designing a morphing structure has been developed. In this proposed DG research, the goal is to develop a morphing skin that must fulfill motion requirement by morphing it along with a morphing structure yet withstand a surface load. The objective of this program is to spearhead a research into a new panel morphing skin that is made of segmented panels, inspired by fish scales. This research program is proposed under three pillars to investigate three types of new panel skins and develop associated design and analysis methodologies. The first pillar is to design, model and analyze a sliding panel skin that is devised as a set of small panels through loose connections joined by a telescopic interlock system allowing them to move relative to each other. Further, smart materials, such as shape memory polymer (SMP), are used to join these panels. A new method will be developed to model this skin system considering a morphing structure as a driving system and a morphing skin as a driven system. The key is to provide a proper constraint model that can truly represent the connections among adjacent panels. An effective numerical method will be developed to solve the panel motions because the computational complexity increases as the number of panels increase. The second pillar is to design, model and analyze a multi-stable panel morphing skin. Through special treatment metallic/composite materials would exhibit bi-stable configurations, which have been used for shape morphing but focusing on a single patch. Our research is to develop a multiple-patch system to form a morphing skin with multi-stable configurations. Different from the first pillar design, this pillar design has all the patches closely connected. Though each patch has two definite stable principal axes, they will behave differently after connection. The key is how to model the boundary conditions among adjacent patches and predict the overall skin shape. The third pillar is to design, model and analyze a continuum panel morphing skin. Currently continuum robots have been researched by utilizing long and slender rods to form for example a snake robot. Our research is to use large, thin and flexible panels that can be deformed to fulfill shape morphing requirement. Though this pillar design may be the best among the three for practical use, it has some limitations. The key is to model the entire skin system that is statically indeterminate and coupled with rigid motion. At the end of this program, all three designs will be summarized in terms of pros and cons that can be used to guide panel morphing skin designs for different applications. The proposed research program will help train a number of graduate students in this emerging area and strengthen collaborations with the Canadian aerospace manufacturing industry.