Shape-morphing technologies with significantly stronger functional integration could provide a clear technological boost. However, for a morphing engine outlet, the morphing structure must be double-curved to form a closed cross section. Project B03 pursues a biomimetic approach of shape morphing based on pressure-actuated cellular structures (PACS). The PACS approach will be applied to double-curved morphing structures with closed cross sections to enable thrust vectoring and a variable nozzle area.

Project B06 investigates the structural integration of the aft-mounted engines, as planned in configuration 1a (with BLI) and 1b (podded engine) to develop design solutions for the cross-system integration of the aircraft tail structure which are fed back into the overall design. With a focus on the entire rear structure and the engine mounts, new technological bricks such as morphing and auxetic structures are considered. To reach the targets novel solution approaches for multidisciplinary design optimisation (MDO) and new fundamental methods for machine-learned (ML) surrogate models and polymorphic uncertainty quantification (PUQ) will be developed in order to exploit the synergies and potentials of multidimensional functional integration.