It is well known that increasing wing span leads to improved aerodynamic performances. To comply with airport infrastructure limits, ground folding wingtips are implemented as a solution for wing span extension. To further justify the mechanism's weight penalty the concept of in-flight folding is investigated here. A time domain aeroservoelastic simulation framework is used to asses its impact on lateral flight dynamics. An established system identification method, was used to derive key lateral aerodynamic derivatives and investigate the aircraft's roll handling qualities. A range of wingtip deflections and various flight conditions were used to generate a sufficiently large database of coefficients to assess the effect of wingtip morphing as a function of airframe flexibility and flight conditions. Results show that overall, small changes in lateral aerodynamic derivatives are introduced with wingtip morphing. Different trends in aerodynamic derivatives were identified as a function of flight condition and wingtip deflection, leading to the derivation of prediction models to replace the aerodynamic derivatives database.
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