Abstract
Abstract. A multi-mode flapping wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV) that uses a figure eight wingtip motion trajectory with wing flapping, rotation, and swing motion is presented in this paper. The flapping wing vehicle achieves three active degrees of freedom (DOF) wing movements only with one driving micromotor which has a good balance in the mechanism design (that is inspired by natural fliers) and total weight. Owing to these characteristics being integrated into the simple mechanism design, the aerodynamic force is improved. The aerodynamic performance of the thrust force is improved by 64.3 % compared to one that could only flap up and down with one active DOF under the condition of routine flapping frequency.
Highlights
A flapping wing micro aerial vehicle (FWMAV), inspired by birds and flying insects, has advantages over fixed wing and rotary wing aerial vehicles in maneuverability, concealment, microminiaturization, and effectiveness under low Reynolds number circumstances; it has attracted many researchers devoting themselves to aerodynamics, high lift mechanism, mechanical design, etc. (Ramasamy et al, 2007; Shyy et al, 2010; Nguyen et al, 2010)
Through a series of aerodynamic force experiments, it was found that the average lift and thrust of the designed aircraft was 27 and 23 g at a 13 Hz operating flapping frequency, which was sufficient to drive the flapping wing vehicle in theory
The aerodynamic characteristics would be improved with the increase in flapping frequency, but the improvement induced by the flapping frequency increase had a limit due to the critical frequency determined by the wing stiffness
Summary
A flapping wing micro aerial vehicle (FWMAV), inspired by birds and flying insects, has advantages over fixed wing and rotary wing aerial vehicles in maneuverability, concealment, microminiaturization, and effectiveness under low Reynolds number circumstances; it has attracted many researchers devoting themselves to aerodynamics, high lift mechanism, mechanical design, etc. (Ramasamy et al, 2007; Shyy et al, 2010; Nguyen et al, 2010). S. Jiang et al.: Design and analysis of an innovative flapping wing micro aerial vehicle wing aircraft, whose patterns were modeled on dragonflies, demonstrating the effectiveness of the modified slider crank mechanism and the capability of constrained hovering and forward flight (Fenelon and Furukawa, 2010). Jiang et al.: Design and analysis of an innovative flapping wing micro aerial vehicle wing aircraft, whose patterns were modeled on dragonflies, demonstrating the effectiveness of the modified slider crank mechanism and the capability of constrained hovering and forward flight (Fenelon and Furukawa, 2010) These aircraft were beyond the definition of micro aircraft due to their large total size and weight. We began the micro flapping wing aircraft design work with traditional mechanisms These existing different flapping, twisting, and swinging compound motions could be expressed by the wingtip trajectory. The details of the design, simulation, manufacturing process, and experiment of the innovative aircraft can be found
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