Compliant vs Kinematic Morphing Architectures: Complementary or Alternatives—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Morphing systems in aeronautics aim to produce clean, compact adaptive aerodynamic surfaces, ensure high efficiency along the complete flight envelope, and sometimes even allow for its extension vs the nominal one.

Those systems are rapidly evolving. Indeed, they have been studied for a very long time, and their birth may be said to be strictly connected to the history of aeronautics since its very beginning. After an acceleration on the matter, from the late 90s to the late 2010s, culminated with the test flight of the adaptive flap on the Gulfstream III in the US and several studies in Europe represented by wide-view projects like SARISTU, the topic is currently being devoted to the adjustment of those results and their conversion to flyable and durable architectures. These two words aim at real technology breaching, which should allow full accessibility to the long-promised achievements.

Since the early days, it may be stated that morphing systems may be categorized into two kinds of architectures: kinematic and compliant. The difference is trivial; while the first one resembles classical biological schematics, or robotics made of different hinged segments (one of the most popular is the finger-like mechanism), the latter refers to systems, continuously variable, based on mechanical hinges, to ensure the regularity of the deformed shape. And yet, these arrangements are heavily contaminated by each other, and their differences may be easily associated with a matter of scale. An infinite degree-of-freedom kinematic system is a compliant one. Their difference may be associated with the need for proper adaptive skin to ensure the research aerodynamic surface continuity irrespective of the inner structure.

This Special Issue invites the scientists and technologists involved in the morphing discipline to formulate an answer to a driving question: can kinematic and compliant visions be merged into a single approach, overcoming their respective weakness and exploiting their strengths? Concurrent visions evolved from different assumptions and may have reasonably acquired valuable and separated experiences, which may be merged and taken advantage of.

Such an approach has interesting perspectives as the scenario addresses important and virtually considerable attainments. The increased use of UAVs, the expected rise of urban air mobility, and the outlook of the advent of biomimetic, flyable robots need technology that allows the full integration of the actuation mechanisms in their bodies, preserving the possibility of adapting the wing shape to the current necessities, bypassing the needs of massive, bulky, and scarcely efficient hyper lift devices. Contributor works may inspire the development of novel, finally unified strategies. The use of smart materials should be considered as a possible key factor in ensuring the delivery of compact and robust systems.

Based on these considerations, articles on one or more of the following topics are mainly searched for:

• Morphing kinematic architectures;
• Morphing compliant architectures;
• Hybrid morphing kinematic-compliant architectures;
• Morphing skins for aerial vehicles;
• Integration of morphing architectures into aircraft systems;
• Morphing system scaling;
• Biomimetic flying robots;
• Robo-insects;
• Robo-birds;
• UAV morphing systems;
• Aircraft and rotorcraft morphing systems;
• Aeroelastic issues of aerial morphing systems;
• Reliability of aerial morphing systems;
• Performance of aerial morphing systems;
• Ground testing of aerial morphing systems;
• Fight testing of aerial morphing systems;
• Requirements and regulations applicable to aerial morphing systems;
• SWOT assessment of aerial morphing systems;
• TRL assessment of aerial morphing systems;
• FHA assessment of aerial morphing systems.

Dr. Antonio Concilio
Dr. Cristian Vendittozzi
Dr. Rosario Pecora
Dr. Salvatore Ameduri
Guest Editors

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• morphing
• morphing kinematic systems
• morphing compliant systems
• morphing skins
• adaptive structures
• smart structures
• smart materials
• actuator networks
• sensor networks
• control systems
• morphing aircraft aeroelasticity
• morphing aircraft performance
• adaptive structures experimental characterization
• ground tests of morphing systems
• flight tests of morphing systems
• SWOT assessment of morphing systems
• TRL assessment of morphing systems
• FHA assessment of morphing systems