Most biological flyers undergo orderly deformation in flight, and the deformations of wings lead to complex fluid-structure interactions. In this paper, an aerodynamic-structural coupling method of flapping wing is developed based on ANSYS to simulate the flapping of flexible wing. Firstly, a three-dimensional model of the cicada’s wing is established. Then, numerical simulation method of unste...

The effect of wing flexibility in hoverflies was investigated using an at-scale mechanical model. Unlike dynamically-scaled models, an at-scale model can include all phenomena related to motion and deformation of the wing during flapping. For this purpose, an at-scale polymer wing mimicking a hoverfly was fabricated using a custom micromolding process. The wing has venation and corrugation prof...

Research in the field of Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FMAV) is an ongoing quest to master the natural flyers by mechanical means. The field is characterized by unsteady aerodynamics, whose knowledge is still developing. Birds and insects have different methods of producing lift and thrust for hovering and forward flight. Most birds, however, cannot hover. Wing tips of birds follow simple pa...

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the evolution of the leading-edge vortex and spanwise flow generated by an insect-like flappingwing at a Reynolds number relevant to flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FMAVs) (Re =∼ 15000). Experiments were accomplished with a firstof-its-kind flapping-wing apparatus. Dense pseudo-volumetric particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements from 1...

In the “modified quasi-steady” approach, two-dimensional (2D) aerodynamic models of flapping wing motions are analyzed with focus on different types of wing rotation and different positions of rotation axis to explain the force peak at the end of each half stroke. In this model, an additional velocity of the mid chord position due to rotation is superimposed on the translational relative veloci...

I nsects and hummingbirds remain unmatched in their aerodynamic ability to hover in place in addition to other acrobatic feats such as flying backward and sideways by exploiting flapping-wing motion [1]. Although this remarkable ability is key to making small-scale aircraft, flapping-hovering behavior has been difficult to reproduce artificially because of the challenging stability, power, and ...

While biological flyers often display deformed wing structures, the effects of flexibility on the flapping wing aerodynamics remain inadequately understood. We investigate the lift generation and phase dynamics of a flapping flexible wing in hover, between Reynolds number of 100 and 1000 corresponding to small insects, using fully coupled Navier-Stokes equation and linear beam model. The γ scal...

Aerodynamic performance and agility during flapping flight are determined by the combination of wing shape and kinematics. The degree of morphological and kinematic optimisation is unknown and depends upon a large parameter space. Aimed at providing an accurate and computationally inexpensive modelling tool for flapping-wing aerodynamics, we propose a novel CFD (computational fluid dynamics)-in...

Fidicina mannifera Fab. (mass 3 g) can fly at a body temperature of 22 °C, but take-off is usually preceded by an endothermic warm-up that elevates Tth to 28 °C or higher. Warm-up is accompanied by slow, almost imperceptible, wing movements, gentle abdominal pumping and an increase in V02 to about 16 times the resting level. During wing-flapping in fixed flight, V02 increases explosively to abo...

Inspired by superior flight performance of natural flight masters like birds and insects and based on the ventilating flaps that can be opened and closed by the changing air pressure around the wing, a new flapping wing type has been proposed. It is known that the net lift force generated by a solid wing in a flapping cycle is nearly zero. However, for the case of the ventilated wing, results f...