Abstract:Inflatable wings are gradually welcomed by vehicle designers because of its superiority that inflatable wing has lower weight, can be tucked and conveniently carried. Inflatable wing is a typical of flexible inflated structure, which involve the advancing front of the distorted UAV that can be applied to tucked vehicles, airplane of earth science research and Mars exploration aircraft etc. This paper adopts the internal tangential circle to approximate standard airfoil profile and use static mechanics to give demonstration. Based on NACA0018, a series of approximate inflatable wings are designed by controlling the numbers of the tangential circles. All designed wings’ aerodynamic characteristics are analyzed and compared using CFD, then basic characters of the conformality method can be obtained. The results show that lift coefficients of inflatable wing lower than standard airfoil, which can reach 80% of standard airfoil, meanwhile ,it variable range is small along with internal tangential circle numbers. But drag coefficients vary obviously, which increases 1~1.5 times correspondingly. Lastly, an inflatable wing prototype is produced , its flying qualities are explored by several test flights.