Steel-based bionic actuators for flapping microair-vehicles

Author

Lung-Jieh Yang ; Dung-Lin Jan ; Wei-Chung Lin

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. & Electromech. Eng., Tamkang Univ., Tamsui, Taiwan

Volume

8

Issue

10

fYear

2013

fDate

Oct. 2013

Firstpage

686

Lastpage

690

Abstract

Presented is an animation of the sporangial motion for making bionic tail actuators of flapping microair-vehicles regarding energy saving. A SUS-304 steel foil 40 μm thick is used as the working substrate. The actuation area of the 40-50 comb-shaped cantilevers is designed to have maximum actuating angle change around the order of several degrees. An Nd-YAG laser cutting is performed to machine the surface tension-driven actuator. Surface modification including parylene coating and oxygen plasma treatment are added to enlarge the actuation stroke angle by up to 10°-12° for practical usage in flight control.

Keywords

actuators; aerospace control; aluminium compounds; biocybernetics; coating techniques; laser beam cutting; neodymium; space vehicles; steel; yttrium compounds; Nd-YAG; SUS-304 steel foil; actuation stroke angle; bionic tail actuators; comb-shaped cantilevers; energy saving; flapping microair-vehicles; flight control; laser cutting; oxygen plasma treatment; parylene coating; size 40 mum; sporangial motion; steel-based bionic actuators; surface modihcation; surface tension-driven actuator; working substrate;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Micro & Nano Letters, IET

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1750-0443

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/mnl.2013.0316

Filename

6651474