MORPHLET (Bristol) (2005-2009)
MORPHLET is the project acronym for MORPHing wingLET - a winglet that can change shape during flight using morphing mechanisms. The MORPHLET is intended to improve the on-route performance of transport aircraft. The baseline aircraft for this project is a 150 passenger narrowbody aircraft. The project was split into two separate parts: first, the optimisation of the cant angle and dihedral angle of a morphing winglet to maximise aircraft range, using low fidelity aerodynamic and structural modelling tools, and second, to produce a laboratory demonstrator to understand the difficulties in designing the skin and mechanism for such a device.
- DD Smith, RM Ajaj, AT Isikveren & MI Friswell, Multi-Objective Optimization for the Multiphase Design of Active Polymorphing Wings. Journal of Aircraft, 49(4), July-August 2012, 1153-1160.
- DD Smith, MH Lowenberg, DP Jones & MI Friswell, Computational and Experimental Validation of the Active Morphing Wing. Journal of Aircraft, 51(3), May 2014, pp. 925-937.
- RM Ajaj, MI Friswell, D Smith & AT Isikveren, A Conceptual Wing-box Weight Estimation Model for Transport Aircraft. The Aeronautical Journal, 117(1191), May 2013, paper number 3796, 533-551.
- NM Ursache, T Melin, AT Isikveren & MI Friswell, Technology Integration for Active Poly-Morphing Winglets Development (1173kB). ASME Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems, Ellicott City, Maryland, USA, 28-30 October 2008, paper number SMASIS2008-496.
- NM Ursache, T Melin, AT Isikveren & MI Friswell, Morphing Winglets for Aircraft Multi-phase Improvement (1287kB). 7th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference (ATIO), Belfast, 18-20 September 2007, paper AIAA-2007-7813.