During his time as research associate at the TUM, Johannes intiated and lead the collaborative research project MILAN, which was funded with 1.6 Mio €. The goal was to design a morphing sailplane wing with a morphing leading edge section. It should have a significant performance advantage over conventional sailplanes. The wing consists of a surprisingly simple compliant mechanism actuation system. Johannes developed the new morphing airfoils and lead the development of the topology optimization software which synthesizes the compliant mechanism. The project culminated in a full scale test article, which demonstrated the principal feasibility of the concept under simulated flight conditions.
