The Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Large‐Scale Morphing Aircraft

Morphing aircraft represents a key developmental trend for next‐generation advanced aerial vehicles, and it is also at the cutting edge of innovative exploration in the aerospace field. Its overall performance advantages are mainly reflected in the cross‐velocity and cross‐medium aspects. In particular, the trans‐supersonic morphing aircraft exhibits better takeoff and acceleration performance as well as transonic flight ability. This paper proposes a new large‐scale morphing aircraft, which adopts the “telescopic diamond‐shape wing”, which can complete large‐scale changes from the state of ultra‐high aspect ratio (12.30) to large slenderness ratio (14.87). In this paper, numerical simulation and wind tunnel test are employed to analyze and evaluate the typical aerodynamic characteristics of this large‐scale morphing aircraft in transonic and supersonic velocity ranges. Obtained results indicate that at Ma = 0.5, the maximum lift‐drag ratio is 24.97. At Ma = 1.5, the minimum drag coefficient is 0.0241. At the same time, with the change of wing sweep angle, the aerodynamic focus of the morphing aircraft also shifts significantly, and the maximum movement reached 12% of the mean aerodynamic chord length at Ma = 0.5. The results of this paper indicate that compared with the traditional morphing aircraft, the large‐scale morphing aircraft has the advantages of better overall performance: higher lift‐drag ratio at high aspect ratios and lower drag at supersonic speeds. In addition, through the pilot flight verification test of the prototype with reduced ratio (1:15), the feasibility of large scale and wing morphing technology is proved, which lays a good foundation for the follow‐up research and technical development of large‐scale morphing flight.