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Imagine looking out the window of an airborne airplane and seeing the wing rippling and twisting. This is what German engineers have created: prototype morphing wings that change their shape mid-flight. The innovation from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), aptly named morphAIR, aims to make aircraft more efficient and easier to control.
Most creatures that move through air or water display remarkable fluidity and adaptability in motion. Birds, for example, are capable of incredibly precise, complex adjustments across their entire wing. Likewise, their aquatic counterparts, fish, move their bodies and fins with a grace. But airplanes have traditionally relied on rigid wings and fixed control surfaces, using flaps, ailerons, and rudders to change direction. These separate movable parts add mechanical complexity, weight, noise, maintenance demands, and aerodynamic losses.
So why have current wings remained the standard for decades, when they are less than optimal for maneuvering? The simple answer is that it’s an engineering compromise. A wing that’s ideal for take-off may not be ideal for cruise. A wing that’s ideal for cruising is not ideal for landing. A wing that’s ideal for one speed, altitude, or maneuver is suboptimal for another functionality.
The German Aerospace Center is challenging this approach with a wing that could become high-lift when needed, low-drag when cruising, responsive when turning, and stable in turbulence.
“The morphing wing can change its shape during flight, allowing it to adapt optimally to different flight conditions,” says project leader Martin Radestock from the DLR Institute of Lightweight Systems. The wings are made entirely of fiber-reinforced composites, featuring a “shape shifting” trailing edge section. This feature is enabled by a Hyperelastic Trailing Edge Morphing system (HyTEM), a DLR-developed technology that allows the wing to deform seamlessly, without steps.
“The HyTEM concept replaces conventional flaps and ailerons with an intelligent system comprising several small actuators distributed across the wingspan. These can precisely adjust the wing profiles at 10 points without creating gaps between sections. The continuous shape reduces profile drag. In addition, lift, induced drag and aircraft control can all be influenced in a targeted manner – a major advantage for aerodynamics and flight mechanics,” Radestock says.
DLR engineers developed an AI-assisted flight control system designed specifically to make full use of the morphing wing’s unique movement capabilities. During flight, the adaptive algorithm continuously monitors the aircraft’s actual behavior and compares it against a trained model.
When deviations are detected, whether from turbulence, damage, or a failing actuator, the system redistributes commands across the wing’s many distributed actuators in real time, maintaining stable flight. The algorithm was also trained on deliberate failure scenarios, teaching it to recognize and compensate for faults that would cripple a conventional fixed-wing system.
While these wings won’t be coming to commercial aircraft anytime soon, they’re a significant development for unmanned aircraft. As a next step, DLR plans to demonstrate scalability with a test flight using a PROTEUS with a total mass of 70 kg (154 lb).