Aerodynamic investigation on shifted-back vertical stroke plane of flapping wing in forward flight

Abstract

In order to properly understand aerodynamic characteristics in a flapping wing in forward flight, additional aerodynamic parameters apart from those in hover—an inclined stroke plane, a shifted-back stroke plane, and an advance ratio—must be comprehended in advance. This paper deals with the aerodynamic characteristics of a flapping wing in a shifted-back vertical stroke plane in freestream. A scaled-up robotic arm in a water towing tank was used to collect time-varying forces of a model flapping wing, and a semi-empirical quasi-steady aerodynamic model, which can decompose the forces into steady, quasi-steady, and unsteady components, was used to estimate the forces of the model flapping wing. It was found that the shifted-back stroke plane left a part of freestream as a non-perpendicular component, giving rise to a time-course change in the aerodynamic forces during the stroke. This also brought out two quasi-steady components (rotational and added-mass forces) apart from the steady one, even the wing moved with a constant stroke velocity. The aerodynamic model underestimated the actual forces of the model flapping wing even it can cover the increasingly distributed angle of attack of the vertical stroke plane with a blade element theory. The locations of the centers of pressure suggested a greater pressure gradient and an elongated leading-edge vortex along a wingspan than that of the estimation, which may explain the higher actual force in forward flight.