Assessing the mechanical and static aeroelastic performance of cellular Kirigami wingbox designs

Adaptive wings configurations have been evaluated for morphing airframe applications during the last two decades. Constructions with flexible hinges can be in particular a solution for small top medium-scale air vehicles, while novel Kirigami technologies help to produce flexible and complex structures by enabling novel geometric paradigms. In this study, a cellular Kirigami wingbox with an adaptive hinge is designed and manufactured. The mechanical properties of the wingbox are numerically evaluated, considering the shear modulus of the cellular elements patterning the wingbox. Thus, the equivalent torsional, flexural stiffness, as well as the shear center location of the whole wingbox structure are calculated. The analysis is parametrized against various possible internal cell angles and cell thickness values that define the Kirigami cellular tessellation of the wingbox. The static divergence speed is also evaluated by means of the same parametrization. This study shows the feasibility of using a Kirigami wingbox concept for morphing/adaptive small to medium-scale from a structural and aeroelastic perspective.