Article A combined experimental-numerical analysis of a novel deformable sandwich structure for morphing wing applications Amin Hajarian 1 , Mohammad Reza Zakerzadeh 1 , Hamid Salehi 2 and Mostafa Baghani 1 Abstract In this paper, a new flexible sandwich structure is introduced, which can be employed in morphing aircrafts capable of intelligently changing their shape in different flight con- ditions. To accomplish this goal, first, a review of the various ideas in the literature is presented. In the following, features of the proposed structure and its differences from other ideas are expressed. Then, the process of fabrication and the various stages of shaping the structure are described. In an aircraft with variable wings camber, the deformable section can be assumed to be a cantilever beam. Thus, samples of the proposed structure are fabricated as the cantilever beam and are tested as tip- loaded beams. Since the numerical analysis of the new structure involves the recogni- tion of the mechanical behavior of its components, a comprehensive review of the mechanical behavior of each component of the structure is performed. Afterwards, the numerical method is utilized to model samples of the structure, and the changes in the samples’ deformation are examined under different loads. According to the obser- vation of the broken samples, to arrive at more accurate numerical results, a distribu- tion for the cavities, caused by the manufacturing process, is considered. Finally, with 1 School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran Corresponding author: Mostafa Baghani, P.O.B. 11155-4563, Tehran, Iran. Email: baghani@ut.ac.ir Journal of Sandwich Structures and Materials 0(0) 1–23 ! The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1099636220979319 journals.sagepub.com/home/jsm