Investigation of Adaptable Winglets for Improved UAV Control and Performance

An investigation of adaptable winglets for morphing
aircraft control and performance is described in this paper. The
concepts investigated consist of various winglet configurations
fundamentally centred on a baseline swept wing. The impetus for the
work was to identify and optimize winglets to enhance controllability
and the aerodynamic efficiency of a small unmanned aerial vehicle.
All computations were performed with Athena Vortex Lattice
modelling with varying degrees of twist, swept, and dihedral angle
considered. The results from this work indicate that if adaptable
winglets were employed on small scale UAV’s improvements in both
aircraft control and performance could be achieved.

• E. Kaygan
• A. Gatto

• Aircraft
• rolling
• wing
• winglet.

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