Comparative Study of Aerodynamic Performance in Baffled and Cellular Inflatable Wings

This work presents the early-stage development of a lightweight, rapidly deployable UAV system featuring inflatable wing technology. The objective is to enable compact storage and automated deployment of fixed-wing platforms in disaster relief and remote access scenarios. Two inflatable wing architectures are considered: a baffled wing and a voxel-based cellular pneumatic wing (CPW). This study presents a comparative analysis of the aerodynamic performance of the two architectures. Results show that the CPW design offers improved stall characteristics and delayed flow separation, while the baffled wing demonstrates higher peak lift and superior lift-to-drag ratios. These findings highlight a design trade-off between aerodynamic efficiency and post-stall stability in inflatable wing configurations. These findings support further development of morphing inflatable airframes capable of robust field operation. This abstract outlines methodology, comparative results, and the planned direction of this work.