High Altitude, Deployable, Carbon Fiber Composite Wing Kit with Very High Lift to Drag Ratio

A difficult challenge for high altitude, long endurance aircraft is the structural design and packaging of very high aspect ratio wings. Trade studies have identified a requirement for deployable wings which are far too long for the conventional solution of simply pivoting outward from the wing root. KaZaK proposes to develop an alternative wing deployment design that can roughly double the span of the deployed wing compared to a conventional pivoting solution. The proposed technology is derived from similar Air Force SBIR funded development work performed by KaZaK for much smaller wings. Deployable wings provide attractive aerodynamic, structural and packaging characteristics that increase aircraft range while requiring comparatively little pre-launch volume. KaZaK’s deployable wing concept will allow increased wing span and aspect ratio compared to current technologies, resulting in improved aerodynamic efficiency (L/D) and greater range. In Phase I, KaZaK will develop and demonstrate a pultrusion-based technique for making low cost composite airfoils. The proposed pultrusion process is ideally suited for making lightweight, low cost, high strength, low signature, high aspect ratio composite wings that will not corrode during storage. The key to this performance is an extremely lightweight and aerodynamically efficient cross section.