Conceptual Design of a Bendable UAV Wing Considering Aerodynamic and Structural Performance

stiffen in positive flight load direction, still remaining compliant in the opposite direction. Such a wing enables UAV storage inside smaller packing volumes. The present paper discusses utilization of a multidisciplinary design approach for conceptual design of a bendable wing having 24 inch span and 7 inch root chord. The wing shape definition parameters and the layup scheme used to manufacture wing, are treated as design variables. Aerodynamic performance of the wing is studied using an extended vortex lattice method based Athena Vortex Lattice (AVL) software. An arc length method based nonlinear FEA routine in ABAQUS is used to evaluate the structural performance of the wing and to determine maximum flying velocity that the wing can withstand without buckling or failing under flight loads. An analytical approach is used to study the stresses developed in the composite wing during storage and Tsai-Wu criterion is used to check failure of the wing due to the rolling stresses to determine minimum storage diameter. Multidisciplinary shape and layup optimization is performed using an elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm: NSGA-II. The design points on the Pareto optimal front thus achieved are compared with a baseline design to observe some designs with improved performance