A recent study by aerospace engineering professor Suong Hoa and his team at Concordia University has determined how to increase the flight efficiency of drone wings for a lower cost.
Hoa, who is director of the Concordia Centre for Composites, pioneered a way to design fibreglass composite materials that he can use to manufacture a new kind of morphing wing for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). He did this by applying the concept of 4D printing—the fourth dimension referring to any object with the ability to change shape on its own through environmental stimuli.
The purpose of the study was to find a style of wing that both costs less to produce and has shape-shifting abilities while in flight. The flexibility of such a wing would allow a UAV to manoeuvre in the sky more easily than a fixed-wing aircraft could.
In a press release about the study, Hoa said his paper “shows that a UAV using this kind of wing can support a good amount of load.”
Thanks to his grasp of composites, he knows how to use 4D printing to generate the materials needed to manufacture his new design of morphing wing. Whereas 3D printing only entails using computer designs layer by layer to make an object, 4D printing requires a more complex process.
“Basically, you take a structure that already exists, whether it is 2D or 3D, and that structure reacts to stimuli from the environment.”
Daniel Rosca, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Concordia who participated in the study, said 4D printing isn’t all about computer designs. Rather than just using internal factors, it requires external factors as well.
“Basically, you take a structure that already exists, whether it is 2D or 3D, and that structure reacts to stimuli from the environment,” Rosca said. “Whether it’s light, temperature or other environmental phenomena, it doesn’t matter.”
This particular study takes the already existing wings of an aircraft and exposes them to the environmental stimuli that allow them to become more flexible and fly through the air more easily.
“If you change the flap at the back [of the wings], they can change their directions extremely fast, which is something most aircrafts can’t do,” Hoa said. “Using the concept of 4D printing for composite [materials], I can use heating or cooling to change my structure to achieve [the desired] results.”
Composite materials, a focus of the study, are made by combining two or more elements that have different chemical and physical properties. Examples of composites include carbon fibre, kevlar and even mud bricks.
“The materials are lightweight and they can be used for making structures in transportation, such as planes and automobiles,” Hoa said. “Due to their lightweight nature, they’re going to be cheaper and we just need to make sure they can support the load.”
In a recorded demonstration, Hoa explained why producing composite materials with 4D printing works better than using 3D printing or other methods.
“The difference between this technique and others is that [the materials] are stiff and strong [from 4D printing] so they can be used for structures like aircrafts,” he said.
From here, Hoa said he is confident his team’s work will attract businesses in this industry to work alongside them and apply their findings on 4D printing to drone technology.
Featured image provided by David Henrichs via Unsplash.
