Computational Fluid-Structure Interaction of a Deformable Flapping Wing for Micro Air Vehicle Applications

Motivated by micro air vehicle applications, a fluid-structure coupling procedure between a NavierStokes solver and a three-dimensional FEM beam solver is presented along with selected results highlighting some of the aerodynamics implications. The fluid model includes laminar, the k ε − turbulence closure, and a filter-based k ε − closure. The structural model is based on an asymptotic approximation to the equations of elasticity. Using the slenderness as the small parameter, the equations are decomposed into two independent variational problems, corresponding to (i) crosssectional, small-deformation and (ii) longitudinal, large deformation analyses. A model example problem corresponding to a NACA0012 wing of aspect ratio 3 in pure heave motion is presented and the results compared against available experiment data. Quantitative comparisons with experiment are done for the rigid wing and the implications of wing flexibility on aerodynamics are presented in a qualitative sense. It was observed that phase lag of the wing tip displacement relative to the flapping motion becomes more pronounced as the fluid density increases.