The design of organizations

Abstract

The focus of this paper is the design of a compliant system that is able to provide structural control and motion to the trailing edge of a morphing aerofoil. An initial skeletal frame type ground structure is selected and then various members are replaced with actuators whose strains are controlled in order to provide a predetermined surface deflection. The objective is defined in two ways, using the distance either to defined surface nodes or to the required surface. A method to choose the optimum actuator locations using a forward subset selection procedure is described, which has been shown to be very efficient compared to an exhaustive search or methods such as a genetic algorithm. These approaches are demonstrated on simulated examples.