Control of flapping wing micro-air vehicles using variable stiffness membrane wings

This paper describes a new actuation method for generating control forces and moments on flapping wing micro air vehicles (MAVs) without modifying the flapping kinematics of the wing. These forces and moments are produced by varying the tension of the wing membrane using piezoelectric actuation. The paper details the formulation of a computational model to predict the aerodynamic forces that are produced using this actuation scheme. From this computation the effect of varying the tension on the aerodynamic forces and moments on the wing can be studied. After tuning, this model can be made sufficiently accurate to be used for control design and optimization.