Design and performance analysis of morphing nose cone driven by a novel bionic parallel mechanism for aerospace vehicle

To maintain the optimal aerodynamic configuration of morphing nose cone for aerospace vehicle according to environmental changes, honeybee abdomen, as a typical example that can adjusts configurations in different flight conditions adaptively, is a critical reference. Here we observe the muscle distribution of honeybee abdomen for revealing the deformation mechanism and a bionic parallel mechanism with distributed drive inspired by the muscle distribution between two adjacent segments is proposed. The kinematic analysis of the bionic parallel mechanism is performed to verify the deformation ability. To obtain the structural parameters, the multi-objective optimization is conducted using Pareto optimality theory. Then, kinematic performance and stiffness performance of the bionic parallel mechanism are analyzed in detail. On this basis, a distributed drive morphing nose cone for aerospace vehicle is designed. The morphing nose cone can change configurations in different environments like honeybee abdomen in accordance with kinematic analysis. Finally, the stiffness performance and aerodynamic performance are investigated to evaluate the morphing nose cone. This study provides new perspectives for the design of morphing aircraft.