Wind tunnel test of a morphing wingtip leading edge

A full scale morphing wing tip demonstrator with a droop-nose adaptive morphing wingtip was wind tunnel tested as part of the European FP7 project NOVEMOR. This demonstrator features a flexible fiberglass skin and internal superelastic nickel titanium and aluminium compliant mechanisms. The tests were carried out to assess the performance of the skin and compliant mechanisms under aerodynamic loading. The results show that strains in the mechanism are mainly due to the actuation showing the adequate stiffness of the mechanism. In addition to strains, pressure data was taken to determine aerodynamic loading. Finite element and computational fluid dynamics simulations performed and overall show good agreement with the experimental values