26th Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences
including the 8th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations (ATIO) Conference
14 - 19 September 2008, Anchorage, Alaska, USA
Paper ICAS 2008-7.8.2

POST-BUCKLED PRECOMPRESSED ELEMENTS: A NEW CLASS OF FLIGHT CONTROL ACTUATORS ENHANCING MORPHING WING UAVS

R. Vos
Univ. of Kansas, USA

Keywords: Adaptive, Piezoelectric, Post-Buckled Precompressed, Morphing

The design, manufacturing and testing of a new class of actuators for morphing wing flight control on subscale Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was investigated. This class of actuators employed a piezoelectric flight control mechanism which relied on axial precompression to magnify control deflections and control forces simultaneously.

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