Abstract: One of the key objectives in the structural design of aircraft and spacecraft is the capability of accurate shape morphing that can meet various operational and environmental requirements for enhanced performance of the flight vehicles. The key to realize such capability could be dependent on the research into the design methods for finding the optimum layout of actuators and the associated controlling parameters. An integrated design optimization method for morphing a thin plate was presented with the shape like an aircraft wing via a concurrent design of the layout for given number of macro fiber composite (MFC)actuators and their relevant controlling parameters without the consideration of the external loads. An integrated optimization model is developed with the goal of minimizing the deviation between a required shape and an actual one through optimizing actuator locations, angles, layer number, symmetry and control voltages subject to the constraints, such as the breakdown voltage of the MFC and the geometrical limit of MFC-actuators. In the numerical examples, considered are three desired shapes of a thin plate with the shape like an aircraft wing, namely, bending, twisting and bending-twisting shapes. A total of 81 uniformly distributed observation points are used to implement shape morphing via evaluating the standard deviation between a desired shape and an actuated one. The optimal standard deviations for the bending, twisting, and bending-twisting shapes are 9.977×10–5, 4.394×10–4 and 5.308×10–4, respectively, which indicate a good accuracy for these multi-parameter shape morphing. Test panels of idealized control surfaces were prepared and experimental setup was constructed. The test results show a good correlation between the desired shape and the actuated one by using the present MFC-layout and controlling parameters, which in turn validates the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.

Key words: integrated design optimization, macro fiber composites, MFC- Layout, structural shape control