Design, construction, and modeling of aircraft door sealing plate based on SMAs

Abstract

In this work, a novel aircraft door sealing structure driven by shape memory alloys (SMAs) is proposed that offers much improved sealing capability than traditional sealing plates. The two-way shape memory effect (TWSME) of SMAs is utilized so that the proposed sealing plate can change its shape through heating and cooling of the driving SMA unit. Considering the inhomogeneous temperature and recovery strain field the SMA exhibits while being trained, a modified finite element (FE) model of the sealing structure is established to predict the deflection of the SMA-based sealing plate. Finally, verification experiments are carried out. The experimental results show good agreement with the FE predictions, indicating good accuracy of the modified FE model as well as the effectiveness of the proposed sealing structure.