A parametric study of flapping wing performance using a robotic flapping wing

Author

Watman, Daniel ; Furukawa, Tomonari

Author_Institution

Sch. of Mech. & Manuf. Eng., Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

fYear

2009

fDate

12-17 May 2009

Firstpage

3638

Lastpage

3643

Abstract

Flapping wings have the potential to revolutionize the field of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs), however the effect of flapping motion on the performance of such wings has not been studied in detail. This paper presents a parametric study of flapping wing propulsion, using two types of passive flapping wings and three flapping motions. Each combination of wing type and flapping motion was tested over a range of amplitudes and frequencies ranging from 1.4-36deg and 5-50 Hz respectively. Wing performance was evaluated by measuring lift force and mechanical efficiency for all tests. The performance of Wing A was found to be significantly higher than Wing B, with up to twice the maximum lift and efficiency. Overall, Wing A with the triangular flapping motion was found to be the most suitable for MAVs. This research has the potential to significantly improve the performance of flapping wing propulsion, resulting in new capabilities and applications for MAVs.

Keywords

aerospace components; aerospace propulsion; aerospace robotics; mobile robots; motion control; flapping motion; flapping wing propulsion; frequency 5 Hz to 50 Hz; micro aerial vehicle; robotic flapping wing performance; Automatic testing; Frequency; Insects; Parametric study; Performance evaluation; Propulsion; Robotics and automation; Robots; System testing; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Automation, 2009. ICRA '09. IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kobe

ISSN

1050-4729

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2788-8

Electronic_ISBN

1050-4729

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROBOT.2009.5152467

Filename

5152467