Control Surface with Innovative Structural Arrangement and Nontraditional Load Paths

Composite aircraft structures have been designed using the same structural configurations as traditional metallic materials. These configurations prevent full utilization of the properties of these materials. Foster-Miller will team with Boeing todevelop a biomimetically inspired structural configuration for an all-moveable control surface. The overall geometry and structural requirements will be based on the results of an internal Boeing program to develop such a control surface for a futureadvanced aircraft. In the proposed program the alternate structural configuration will be developed, a representative test article will be designed, built and structurally tested. The emphasis of the design development and feasibility demonstrationeffort will be the integration of the shaft about which the surface rotates with the substructure elements. (P-020235) The proposed program will demonstrate the advantages of non-traditional structural configurations in improving the load paths in composite structures. These configuration changes and load path improvements will result in reduced part count, reducednumber of fasteners, and improvements in the structural weight and cost relative to the current state of the art.