Investigations on Inflatable Ring Wing of a Compact Type Roadable Aircraft 2005-01-3422

As for a possible future vehicle, several types of roadable aircrafts have been studied recently. In this paper, a compact type roadable aircraft with a fixed ring wing is investigated. When a roadable aircraft is driven on road, its dimension has to be restricted by the Road Traffic Act, which indicates that the wing cannot be large. In flight, an enough wing size is needed to keep the weight and takeoff. One possible solution to solve this antinomy is an inflatable wing. In order to prove a possibility of an inflatable ring wing, the deformation of a ring wing and the aerodynamics characteristics are investigated. The FEM simulations are performed to examine the deformation of an inflatable ring wing by using ANSYS and MARC. The influences of deformations of a ring wing upon lift and drag are clarified by numerical simulation with the use of a commercial CFD code, SCRYU/Tetra.