Nonlinear Aeroelastic Simulations of a Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle Using Two Unsteady Aerodynamic Formulations

Nonlinear aeroelasticity of a flapping wing Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) is analyzed in this paper. The geometrically nonlinear deformations are modeled by a nonlinear strain-based beam formulation, coupled with six rigid-body degrees of freedom of the aircraft. Wing flapping kinematics is described using a set of Euler angles. Two types of unsteady aerodynamic formulations are incorporated for loads on all lifting surfaces. One is Peters’ finitestate inflow formulation and the other is developed in Cranfield University, which considers the effects of vortex shedding from both the airfoil’s leadingand trailing-edges on lift generation. All these formulations are implemented in an integrated numerical frame-work, where coupled aeroelastic and flight dynamic simulations can be performed. The two aerodynamic formulations are prototyped within this framework and their applicability is assessed.