Over the last decades, there has been great interest in understanding the aerodynamics of flapping flight and development of flapping wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAVs). The camber deformation and twisting has been demonstrated quantitatively in a number of insects, but making artificial wings that mimic those features is a challenge. This paper reports the development and characterization of art...

Number of Papers published in peer-reviewed journals: Number of Papers published in non peer-reviewed journals: Unsteady Aerodynamics of Flapping Wings at Re=10.000 100,000 for Micro-Air Vehicles-Final Report Report Title The overall project goal was to investigate low Reynolds number (10,000-100,000) flapping flight for MAV applications. Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) is used for unsteady aerody...

Number of Papers published in peer-reviewed journals: Number of Papers published in non peer-reviewed journals: Unsteady Aerodynamics of Flapping Wings at Re=10.000 100,000 for Micro-Air Vehicles-Final Report Report Title The overall project goal was to investigate low Reynolds number (10,000-100,000) flapping flight for MAV applications. Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) is used for unsteady aerody...

The design of efficient flapping wings for human engineered micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) has long been an elusive goal, in part due to the large size of the design space. One strategy for overcoming this difficulty is to use a multi-fidelity simulation strategy appropriately balances computation time and accuracy. We compare two models with different geometric and physical fidelity. The low-fid...

Title of dissertation: DYNAMICS AND AEROELASTICITY OF HOVER CAPABLE FLAPPING WINGS: EXPERIMENTS AND ANALYSIS Beerinder Singh, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Professor Inderjit Chopra Department of Aerospace Engineering This dissertation addresses the aerodynamics of insect-based, bio-inspired, flapping wings in hover. An experimental apparatus, with a bio-inspired flapping...

flapping-wing robotic insects are small, highly maneuverable flying robots inspired by biologicalinsects and useful for a wide range of tasks, including exploration, environmental monitoring, searchand rescue, and surveillance. recently, robotic insects driven by piezoelectric actuators have achievedthe important goal of taking off with external power; however, fully autonomous operation requir...

Dragonflies are dramatic, successful aerial predators, notable for their flight agility and endurance. Further, they are highly capable of low-speed, hovering and even backwards flight. While insects have repeatedly modified or reduced one pair of wings, or mechanically coupled their fore and hind wings, dragonflies and damselflies have maintained their distinctive, independently controllable, ...

Here we explain how flapping micro air vehicles (MAVs) can be designed at different scales, from bird to insect size. The common believe is that micro fixed wing airplanes and helicopters outperform MAVs at bird scale, but become inferior to flapping MAVs at the scale of insects as small as fruit flies. Here we present our experience with designing and building micro flapping air vehicles that ...

We explore theoretically the aerodynamics of a recently fabricated jellyfish-like flying machine (Ristroph & Childress, J. R. Soc. Interface, vol. 11 (92), 2014, 20130992). This experimental device achieves flight and hovering by opening and closing opposing sets of wings. It displays orientational or postural flight stability without additional control surfaces or feedback control. Our model ‘...