Modeling of Unsteady Aerodynamics for a Flapping wing

Abstract

Insect-like flapping flight offers a power-efficient and highly manoeuvrable basis for a micro air vehicle. In this paper, investigation was made into the aerodynamic analysis of a flapping wing applicable to micro aerial vehicles. First, the three dimensional aerodynamic calculation and flow field simulation of a flapping wing were studied. Then, the generation of reduced order models for computing the unsteady and nonlinear aerodynamic loads on the flapping wing from flapping motions is described. The models considered are based on Volterra theory using nonlinear kernels. One of the biggest challenges in creating these reduced order modeling techniques is accurate identification of the Volterra kernels. The validity of models studied was assessed by comparison of the model outputs with unsteady CFD result. It was proved that the percent error between CFD and reduced order model is 8.55.