Abstract
Development of flapping wing aerial vehicle (FWAV) has been of interest in the aerospace community with ongoing research into unsteady and low Reynolds number aerodynamics based on the vortex lattice method. Most of the previous research has been about pitching and plunging motion of the FWAV. With pitching and flapping motion of FMAV, people usually study it by experiment, and little work has been done by numerical calculation. In this paper, three-dimension unsteady vortex lattice method is applied to study the lift and thrust of FWAV with pitching and flapping motion. The results show that: 1) Lift is mainly produced during down stroke, however, thrust is produced during both down stroke and upstroke. The lift and thrust produced during down stroke are much more than that produced during upstroke. 2) Lift and thrust increase with the increase of flapping frequency; 3) Thrust increases with the increase of flapping amplitude, but the lift decreases with the increase of flapping amplitude; 4) Lift and thrust increase with the increase of mean pitching angle, but the effect on lift is much more than on thrust. This research is helpful to understand the flight mechanism of birds, thus improving the design of FWAV simulating birds.
Highlights
All flying animals in the nature use flapping-wing flight mode
2) Lift and thrust increase with the increase of flapping frequency; 3) Thrust increases with the increase of flapping amplitude, but the lift decreases with the increase of flapping amplitude; 4) Lift and thrust increase with the increase of mean pitching angle, but the effect on lift is much more than on thrust
For more than a decade, flapping wing aerial vehicle (FWAV) inspired by biological flyers such as insects and birds are suitable for missions involving confined spaces, such as buildings or short distances
Summary
All flying animals in the nature use flapping-wing flight mode. For more than a decade, flapping wing aerial vehicle (FWAV) inspired by biological flyers such as insects and birds are suitable for missions involving confined spaces, such as buildings or short distances. Recent studies have uncovered previously unknown unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms of flapping flight These include the clap and fling [1], leading edge vortex generation [2], rotational lift [3], and wing-wing interaction [4] mechanisms, which help explain the basic principles of unsteady force generation in flight. Most researchers studied a combined pitching and plunging motion of FWAV, such as Jones [8], Heath cote [9], Stewart [10], and so on Their analysis was based on two-dimension aerodynamic model. Most work mentioned above were either on the numerical analysis or on the experimental investigation In this paper, both numerical analysis and experimental investigation will be used to analyze the lift and thrust characteristics of FWAV with pitching and flapping motion. This research is helpful to improve the design of FWAV
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