Bioinspired Control of Rudderless Morphing UAVs

Lawren Gamble
Aerospace Engineering PhD Candidate

Professor Daniel J. Inman
Dissertation Chair

Morphing to seamlessly alter aircraft geometry for either multi-mission or adaptive fly-by-feel flight has recently become an emerging field of research. With the added benefits of tailored aerodynamics, an aircraft no longer needs to be designed to suit a single cruise flight condition. This is particularly useful for small UAVs which, like birds and insects, tend to operate at lower altitudes and even in urban environments where the flow can frequently change drastically.

The primary objective of this research is to investigate morphing applications for rudderless UAVs, which have seldom been studied prior to this point, through bioinspiration. This is accomplished through both analytical aerodynamic modeling, and experimental design and investigation of novel morphing actuators using Macrofiber Composites. Using these smart material actuators, complex shape change such as spanwise camber morphing and three-dimensional bending-twisting coupling is achieved.

Overall, this dissertation presents three main contributions to the field of morphing aircraft. The first contribution is an analytical derivation that assesses the impact of scale and altitude on flight. A extended nonlinear lifting line model was also developed specifically for spanwise morphing aircraft such that the spanwise geometry can be optimized to recover from stall. Lastly, a novel bioinspired tail actuator is developed for multifunctional pitch and yaw control using MFCs, and was experimentally verified.


Dissertation Committee:
Daniel J. Inman (chair)
Carlos E. Cesnik (committee member)
Douglas L. Altshuler (committee member)
Henry A. Sodano (cognate member)


Journal Articles:

Gamble, L. L., Pankonien, A. M., and Inman., D. J., “Stall Recovery of a MorphingWing via Extended Nonlinear Lifting-Line Theory,” AIAA, Vol. 55, No. 9, 2017, pp. 2956–2963.

Gamble, L. L. and Inman, D. J., “Why morphology matters in birds and UAV’s: How scale affects attitude wind sensitivit,” Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 111, No. 20, 2017, pp. 203701.

Gamble, L. L. and Inman, D. J., “A tale of two tails: Developing an avian-inspired morphing actuator for yaw control and stability,” Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2018.


Conference Proceedings:

Gamble, L. L., Pankonien, A. M., and Inman, D. J., “Stall Recovery of the Span-wise Morphing Trailing Edge Concept via an Optimized Nonlinear Model,” 26th International conference on Adaptive Structures and Technologies, 2015.

Gamble, L. L. and Inman, D. J., “Yaw Control of a Smart Morphing Tailless Aircraft Concept,” 5th International Conference on Smart and Multifunctional Materials, Structures and Systems, 2016.

Pankonien, A. M., Gamble, L. L., Faria, C., & Inman, D. J., “Synergistic Smart Morphing AIleron: Capabilites Identification,” 24th AIAA/AHS Adaptive Structures Conference, AIAA Scitech, 2016.

Moosavian, A., Gamble, L. L., Pankonien, A. M., & Inman, D. J., “Bio-inspired Coupling of Camber and Sweep in Morphing Wings.,” ASME 2016 Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems, SMASIS, 2016

Gamble, L. L. and Inman, D. J., “Aerodynamic Performance of a Bioinspired Morphing Tailless Aircraft Concept,” 27th International Conference on Adaptive Structures and Technologies, 2017

Gamble, L. L., Moosavian, A., & Inman, D. J., “Effects of Speed on Coupled Sweep and Camber in Morphing Wings,” 55th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, AIAA Scitech, 2017

Gamble, L. L. and Inman, D. J., “Bioinspired pitch control using a piezoelectric horizontal tail for rudderless UAVs,” Smart Structures and Materials and Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, SPIE, 2018.