Methods Used to Evaluate the Hawkmoth (Manduca Sexta) as a Flapping-Wing Micro Air Vehicle

Examining a biological flapping-flight mechanism as a mechanical system provides valuable insight related to the development and construction of Flapping-Wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAVs). Insects provide excellent candidates for this reverse-engineering, and one species in particular, the hawkmoth Manduca sexta, stands out as an exceptional model. Engineers with FWMAV aspirations can benefit greatly from knowledge of M.sexta\u27s advanced yet deceptively simple flight mechanism. Avenues for investigating this mechanism include finite element modeling, nanoindentation for material properties, and mechanical power output calculations or measurement. This paper presents these concepts and reviews existing literature to provide a platform for ongoing FWMAV research and design

CM Scale Flapping Wing Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle At Very Low Reynolds Numbers Regime

This dissertation investigates the CM$-$SCALE Flapping Wing of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (FWUAV) that can accommodate nacelles of the scale of current Unmanned Air vehicle (UAV) designs are complex systems and their utilization is still in its infancy. The improving design of unmanned aerial vehicle from previous teams by improving the wings and outer body of bird. So, to potentially improve wing design, a complaint joint mechanism is proposed in order to make wing flapping and provide lift and thrust needed to fly. Also, change the wing design from flat wing to airplane wing by using two different airfoils, NACA 0012 and s1223. For bird\u27s body change the internal body to ensure to contain all internal components and give more space for flapping wings. Concurrently a redesign of the outer shell by making it smoother and lighter will be commensurate with the updated design. In addition, development of an evaluation methodology for the capability of a flapping wing to replication design loads by using computational fluid dynamic CFD by using fluid structure interaction in 2D and 3D analysis. We will investigate the design and analysis of the flapping wing. Specifically, this includes: 1. Review of cm−Scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Model and design (a) Investigate flapping Mechanism. (b) Investigate gear mechanism 2. Analysis of flapping wings for MAV (a) Select Airfoils for flapping wing. (b) Analyze Flapping Wings. (c) Make recommendations for Tail design for MAV. (d) Make recommendations for the improved design of MAV body. 3. Development of Finite Element flapping wing Model. (a) 2D computational analysis for Airfoils. i. NACA0012 Airfoil. ii. s1223 Airfoil. (b) 3D computational analysis with different shape of wings. i. Relationship between critical parameters and performance. ii. Design Optimization. Which is new key to make flapping wing close to the nature or real flapping wing, a new wing design inspired from nature exactly from thrush and scaled to our design. Starting from gear design by choose proper gear system. Then redesign the wings to commensurate with new bird. Computational fluid analysis also will used to replicate the loads needed to fly. This is another important area in which the literature is not offering guidance. Addresses the lack of an overview paper in the literature that outlines the challenges of testing a full$-$scale flapping wing Unmanned aerial vehicle onto laminar flow test and suggests research direction to address these challenges. Although conceptual in nature, this contribution is expected to be significant given that it takes experience in the unmanned vehicle industry to determine what challenges matter and need to be addressed. The growth in testing full-scale unmanned air vehicle using a laminar flow test being recent limits the number of people who can offer the perspective needed to suggest a research roadmap

DESIGN AND CONTROL OF A HUMMINGBIRD-SIZE FLAPPING WING MICRO AERIAL VEHICLE

Flying animals with flapping wings may best exemplify the astonishing ability of natural selection on design optimization. They evince extraordinary prowess to control their flight, while demonstrating rich repertoire of agile maneuvers. They remain surprisingly stable during hover and can make sharp turns in a split second. Characterized by high-frequency flapping wing motion, unsteady aerodynamics, and the ability to hover and perform fast maneuvers, insect-like flapping flight presents an extraordinary aerial locomotion strategy perfected at small size scales. Flapping Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (FWMAVs) hold great promise in bridging the performance gap between engineered flying vehicles and their natural counterparts. They are perfect candidates for potential applications such as fast response robots in search and rescue, environmental friendly agents in precision agriculture, surveillance and intelligence gathering MAVs, and miniature nodes in sensor networks

Effect of Rotor Blade Geometry on the Performance of Rotary-Winged Micro Air Vehicle

The development of physics based analysis to predict the hover performance of a micro rotor system meant for a hover capable micro air vehicle for studying the role of blade geometric parameters (such as planform, twist etc.) is discussed. The analysis is developed using blade element theory using lookup table for the sectional airfoil properties taken from literature. The rotor induced inflow is obtained using blade element momentum theory. The use of taper seems beneficial in improving the hover efficiency for lower values of thrust coefficient. For rotors operating at high thrust conditions, high negative twist is desirable. There is no unique blade geometry which performs well under all thrust conditions. This well validated analysis can be used for design of hover capable micro air vehicles

Virtual-work-based optimization design on compliant transmission mechanism for flapping-wing aerial vehicles

This paper presents a method for analyzing and optimizing the design of a compliant transmission mechanism for a flapping-wing aerial vehicle. Its purpose is of minimizing the peak input torque required from a driving motor. In order to maintain the stability of flight, minimizing the peak input torque is necessary. To this purpose, first, a pseudo-rigid-body model was built and a kinematic analysis of the model was carried out. Next, the aerodynamic torque generated by flapping wings was calculated. Then, the input torque required to keep the flight of the vehicle was solved by using the principle of virtual work. The values of the primary attributes at compliant joints (i.e., the torsional stiffness of virtual spring and the initial neutral angular position) were optimized. By comparing to a full rigid-body mechanism, the compliant transmission mechanism with well-optimized parameters can reduce the peak input torque up to 66.0%

The Characterization of Material Properties and Structural Dynamics of the Manduca Sexta Forewing for Application to Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle Design

The Manduca Sexta species of moth serves as a source of biological inspiration for the future of micro air vehicle flapping flight. The ability of this species to hover in flapping flight has warranted investigation into the critical material, structural, and geometric properties of the forewing of this biological specimen. A rigorous morphological study of the Manduca Sexta forewing was conducted to characterize the physical and material properties of the biological forewing for the purpose of developing an advanced parametric three dimensional model finite element analysis (FEA) model. This FEA model was tuned to match the experimentally determined structural dynamics of the biological specimen and serves as the basis for an engineered wing design. Manufacturing methods are developed and implemented to fabricate the baseline engineered wing design. Biological wings and engineered wings are experimentally tested to determine the aerodynamic lift production of each of wings under the same boundary conditions. Through this research, a structural dynamics based engineering methodology has been used to design, develop, and identify biomimetic engineered wings that experimentally produce aerodynamic forces equivalent to their biological analog

Stability and power optimality in time-periodic flapping wing structures

This paper investigates the nonlinear dynamics of a vehicle with two flexible flapping wings. The body dynamics and the wings\u27 deformation are monolithically grouped into a single system of equations, with aerodynamics accounted for by a quasi-steady blade element method. A periodic shooting method is then used to locate closed orbits of this non-autonomous system, and Floquet multipliers assess the linearized stability about the nonlinear orbit. This framework is then exposed to a gradient based optimizer, in order to quantify the role of wing planform variables, wing structure variables, and kinematic actuation variables in obtaining vehicles with superior open-loop stability characteristics, and/or low-power requirements

Numerical And Experimental Investigation Of 2D Membrane Airfoil Performance

The characteristic feature of a mammalian flight is the use of thin compliant wings as the lifting surface. This unique feature of flexible membrane wings found in flying mammals such as bats and flying squirrel was studied in order to explore its possibility as flexible membrane wings in aerodynamics performance study. The unsteady aspects of the fluid-structure interaction of membrane wings are very complicated and therefore did not receive much attention compared to the rigid wing. Motivated by this, a membrane airfoil consisting of latex sheet mounted on a NACA 643-218 airfoil frame was developed to study effect of membrane flexibility on laminar separation bubble (LSB), effects of membrane thickness, Reynolds number (Re), and membrane rigidity on the aerodynamic performance (lift and drag), meant for low Re applications. Unsteady, two dimensional (2D) simulations were also carried out on rigid and membrane airfoils with the air flow modeled as Laminar and the turbulent cases being modeled using Spalart-Allmaras viscous model. FLUENT 6.3 was employed to study the fluid flow behavior, whereas ABAQUS 6.8-1 was utilized as structural solver, both of which were coupled in real time using the MpCCI 3.1 software. It has been established that, the LSB is greatly influenced by the membrane flexibility, and the membrane airfoil has superior flow separation characteristics over rigid one