A variable stiffness morphing skin: preparation and properties

In the course of flight, morphing skins play an important role in morphing aircrafts. Shape memory polymer (SMP) with variable stiffness performance is a good candidate material for skin. In this paper, a series of SMP morphing skins were prepared from hydro-epoxy resin, carboxyl-terminated butadiene acrylonitrile (CTBN) and maleic anhydride. By adjusting molecular weight and content of CTBN, in-plane properties and out-of-plane properties of morphing skins can be adjusted. Due to the in-plane tensile stress acting on the skin during flight, tensile test was carried out to study its in-plane performance. After testing, skin can resist maximum in-plane tensile strength of 63.7 MPa. As for the out-of-plane performance of the skin, shape memory test was studied in this paper. All morphing skins have 100% shape fixity rate (Rf) and fast shape recovery rate (Rr). When toughened by CTBN of 10% of 4000 molecular weight with a mass fraction, the skin can recover its out-of-plane deformed shape in 33 s. The SMP skins were proved to be a promising candidate for morphing skins.