Brief History and Prospect of Typical Morphing Aircraft

Morphing aircraft is widely considered as an revolution for designing and operating aero-vehicles and has been hot researched from the last decade. However, most types of morphing aircraft are not brand new concepts, and some even have a history of more than 90 years. As active technologies developing dramatically, many talented ideas of morphing aircraft will be realized in the 21st century and will be applied to different types of aircraft. The paper briefly reviews the evolutionary history of three kinds of typical morphing aircraft, which shows most modern morphing aicraft concepts are originated from existing aircraft. The paper also discusses the relationship of morphing aircraft and UAVs, which reveals that UAV may be a suitable platform to demonstrate relevant morphing technologies but it is not the only potential of morphing aircraft. On the basis of analyzing the relationship between morphing concepts and aircraft types, some application examples of morphing aircraft are illustrated.