Assessment of Morphing Wings on the Rear Empennages of a Tiltrotor

Current trends in the design of transport aircraft have shown that in order to be economically viable and competitive it is necessary to investigate technologies that can give an improvement in performance and a reduction in the fuel consumption. The present study is aimed at investigating the effect of “Morphing Wings” on the aerodynamic performance of the rear empennages of a new generation tiltrotor called ERICA (Enhanced Rotorcraft Innovative Concept Achievement). Actually, morphing wings may offer significant potential benefits over conventional rigid wings. In particular, the adaptive wing camber was selected as the most promising solution for the present work. Specifically, the “finger concept” was chosen as the morphing technique due to its simplicity, reliability, and ability to fulfill the strict safety rules. A series of computational fluid dynamic analyses at Re = 14x106 were performed in order to obtain the best morphing shape of the “finger” elements in terms of aerodynamic efficiency and maximum. A remarkable increment of lift coefficient slope and an overall aerodynamic efficiency enhancement was achieved with respect to the baseline.