Abstract
For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), a hinge-less structure is desired to reduce the total weight and improve the strength of the joint. In the present paper, a new partially flexible CFRP is proposed. The partially flexible CFRP has high-stiffness parts and a low-stiffness part in a structure. Silicon rubber is adopted to realize the low-stiffness part, and normal epoxy resin is used for the stiff structural parts. To investigate the performance of the partially flexible joint, curvature was measured and cyclic bending test and flight test were performed. The result of the measurement of curvature showed that curvature stays constant in 0.5. The results of the cyclic bending test showed that the appropriate width of the flexible part is 10mm. In the flight test model plane that tail assembly was made of partially flexible CFRP was used. The result showed that partially flexible CFRP has possibility to be applied to UAV.
