High-Fidelity Computations of Moving and Flexible Wing Sections with Application to Micro Air Vehicles

Computations and analysis of moving and flexible wing sections with applications to micro air vehicles are presented. A well-validated, robust, sixth-order Navier-Stokes solver is employed to model the aerodynamic response and is coupled with a nonlinear membrane structural model for flexible membrane wing simulations. A novel implicit large eddy simulation (LES) approach which exploits the characteristics of the higher-order accurate computational scheme provides a unified computational approach for the laminar/transitional/turbulent flowfields calculated. Computations for an SD7003 airfoil at a Reynolds number, Re=60,000 show good agreement with high-resolution experimental data. Further computations for an SD7003 airfoil undergoing sinusoidal plunge oscillations show the dramatic effect dynamic motion can have on the low Reynolds number transitional flowfields. Finally, computations of a flexible, membrane wing airfoil demonstrate the impact of the development of mean camber and the close coupling between the unsteady vortex shedding and the dynamic structural response.