A Brief Study, Research, Design, Analysis on Multi Section Variable Camber Wing

Minimizing fuel consumption is one of the major concerns in the aviation industry. In the past decade, there\ud have been many attempts to improve the fuel efficiency of aircraft. One of the methods proposed is to vary the\ud lift-to-drag ratio of the aircraft in different flight conditions. To achieve this, the wing of the airplane must be\ud able to change its configuration during flight, corresponding to different flight regimes.In the research presented\ud in this thesis, the aerodynamic characteristics of a multisection, variable camber wing were investigated. The\ud model used in this research had a 160mm chord and a 200mm wingspan, with the ribs divided into 4 sections.\ud Each section was able to rotate approximately 5 degrees without causing significant discontinuity on the wing\ud surface. Two pneumatic actuators located at the main spar were used to morph the wing through mechanical\ud linkages. The multi-section variable camber wing model could provide up to 10 percent change in camber from\ud the baseline configuration, which had a NACA0015 section.The wing was tested in the free-jet wind tunnel at\ud three different Reynolds numbers: 322000, 48000, and 636000. Static tests were performed to obtain lift and\ud drag data for different configurations. Two rigid wings in baseline and camber configuration were built and\ud tested to compare the test data with variable camber wing. The wind tunnel test results indicated that the multisection\ud variable camber wing provided a higher lift than the rigid wing in both configurations whereas high drag\ud was also generated on the variable camber wing due to friction drag on the wing skin. The larger drag value\ud appeared on variable camber wing in baseline configuration than in cambered configuration resulting in lower\ud lift-to-drag ratio as compared to the baseline rigid wing whereas the variable camber wing in cambered\ud configuration had higher lift-to-drag ratio than the cambered rigid wing