Adaptive Compliant Wing

Traditionally, engineered artifacts are designed to be strong and stiff. Designs in nature are strong but not stiff - they are compliant. Although nature thrives on use of compliance, the engineering world has traditionally limited itself to rigid structures and mechanisms. Practical solutions can be developed by exploiting preferred effects of compliance. Majority of current research in adaptive structures embraces the traditional notion of deploying a plethora of actuators (distributed actuation) within a stiff structure to simulate compliant behavior in an adaptive airfoil. Scalability and reliability of such distributed actuation methods is questionable. If the underlying structure is designed to be inherently compliant, then the resulting design will require fewer actuators and simpler controls.The proposed Adaptive Compliant Wind (ACW) concept relies on distributed compliance rather than distributed actuation. The ACW potentially offers significant advantages in terms of unitized light-weight construction actuated by a single conventional electric motor, high strain and force capabilities, low power requirements, excellent packaging efficiency, no heat generation, excellent dynamic response, low hysteresis and can be tailored for force or displacement amplification. The ACW concept is a new approach and a scaleable solution to the problem of achieving desired shape changes in airfoils. The ACW eliminates discrete control surfaces since the mechanism is contained within the airfoil.