The U. S. Air Force has identified a need to develop innovative technologies which will enable overall miniaturization of micro air weapons (MAW) to allow such weapons to be sufficiently compact to accommodate diverse deployment scenarios. Miniaturization of the weapon airframe necessarily requires that airframe components be miniaturized to provide adequate volume for mission payloads. In particular, the Air Force has earmarked flight control actuation devices as critical components requiring miniaturization. The conventional approach for control surface actuation in small air vehicles has been the use of analog or digital servos mounted in the airframe fuselage. Control rods connect the servo horns to the air vehicles control surfaces to provide deflection forces in response to autopilot commands. Servos work effectively. However, they do occupy critical volume within the fuselage and can significantly contribute to air vehicle weight. If servos can be replaced with miniature-actuation devices within the fuselage, or more attractively, replaced with miniature actuators that can be embedded directly onto the control surface, both increased payload volume and reduced weight can be realized. Accordingly, the focus of this research is to identify and assess the applicability of innovative actuation technologies that afford MAW payload and weight benefits, yet still provide effective control surface deflection forces to reliably maneuver the air vehicle. Specifically, the research will address three alternative technologies. In each case, the force and bandwidth provided by an actuator representing each of these technologies shall be experimentally evaluated and quantified.
Benefit: Several technological benefits will be derived from the successful completion of this Phase I research. Miniaturizing airframe size will be a paramount requirement due to the inevitable emergence of swarming MAVs for ISR missions or multiple MAWs for strike applications. To that end, exploiting technologies that afford embedding actuators directly onto the control surface or wing represents a key development milestone. By thoroughly evaluating three diverse technologies, the results of this Phase I program shall indentify the most viable embedded-actuator technology for near-term implementation on both military and commerical UAV platforms.
Keywords: Actuator, Piezo-Electric, Servo, Magnetic, Polymer, Actuation
