Insect wings do not contain intrinsic musculature to change shape, but rather bend and twist passively during flight. Some insect wings feature flexible joints along their veins that contain patches of resilin, a rubber-like protein. Bumblebee wings exhibit a central resilin joint (1m-cu) that has previously been shown to improve vertical force production during hovering flight. In this study, ...

A three-dimensional numerical avian model was developed to investigate the unsteady and turbulent aerodynamic performance of flapping wings for varying wingbeat frequencies and flow velocities (up to 12 Hz and 9 m s(-1)), corresponding to a reduced frequency range of k=0.22 to k=1.0 and a Reynolds number range of Re=16,000 to Re=50,000. The wings of the bird-inspired model consist of an elastic...

A micro air vehicle is a flight system being designed for operation within urban environments. Such vehicles are small and highly agile but often have limited control authority. This paper investigates the use of morphing as an effector to provide control authority. Simple mechanisms for morphing are designed to twist the wings of a 24 in vehicle and to curl the wings of a 12 in vehicle. Flight...

Open jet testing is a valuable testing technique which provides the desired results with reasonable accuracy. It has been used in past for the airships and now has recently been applied for the hybrid ones, having more non-buoyant force coming from the wings, empennage and the fuselage. In the present review work, an effort has been done to review the challenges involved in open jet testing. In...

Swimming fish and flying insects use the flapping of fins and wings to generate thrust. In contrast, microscopic organisms typically deform their appendages in a wavelike fashion. Since a flapping motion with two degrees of freedom is able, in theory, to produce net forces from a time-periodic actuation at all Reynolds numbers, we compute in this paper the optimal flapping kinematics of a rigid...

Recently, a great interest in search of alternate means power for the traditional fuel aircraft propulsion is raised so as to decrease gas emissions and reduce operating costs. For small micro unmanned aerial vehicles or transportation aircraft, there are many challenges direction constructing an electric solar powered airplane whose wings may possibly be sheltered with photo voltaic PV panels ...

Insects perform fast rotational manoeuvres during flight. While two insect orders use flapping halteres (specialized organs evolved from wings) to detect body dynamics, it is unknown how other insects detect rotational motions. Like halteres, insect wings experience gyroscopic forces when they are flapped and rotated and recent evidence suggests that wings might indeed mediate reflexes to body ...

The unsteady low Reynolds number aerodynamics of flapping flight was investigated experimentally through flow visualization by suspended particle imagery and wall shear stress measurement from micro-array hot-film anemometry. In conjunction, a mechanism was developed to create a flapping motion with three degrees of freedom and adjustable flapping frequency. The flapping kinematics and wing sha...

Micro aerial vehicles have been the subject of continued interest and development over the last several years. The majority of current vehicle concepts rely on rigid f ixed wings or rotors. An alternate design based on an aeroelastic membrane wing has also been developed that exhibits desired characteristics in f l ight test demonstrations, competition, and in prior aerodynamics studies. This p...

The basis of this work was to understand the generation of lift and thrust of a flapping biwing ornithopter, which is influenced by its geometrical, dynamic, kinematic and aerodynamic features by following a generic approach in order to identify and mimic the mechanisms. As further development of earlier work, three-dimensional rigid thin wing is considered in flapping and pitching motion using...