A blade element approach to modeling aerodynamic flight of an insect-scale robot

Clawson, Taylor S.; Fuller, Sharon; Wood, Robert J.; Ferrari, Silvia

doi:10.23919/acc.2017.7963382

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…represents the moment around the torsion ξ-axis due to the force component dF j , x j denotes the distance from the center of the force component dF j to the ξ-axis, and j denotes translational, rotational, added mass or inertial components. The location of the center of the aerodynamic forces in the chordwise direction is assumed to be a function of local AoA (θ) of the wing section (Dickson et al, 2006(Dickson et al, , 2008Whitney and Wood, 2010;Clawson et al, 2017). Its position from the LE of the wing, d(θ)=c[(0.82/π)|θ|+0.05], is determined using experimental data obtained from a study by Dickson et al (2006).…”

Section: Wing Kinematics Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Wing inertia as a cause of aerodynamically uneconomical flight with high angles-of-attack in hovering insects

Phan

2018

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Flying insects can maintain maneuverability in the air by flapping their wings, and, to save energy, the wings should operate following optimal kinematics. However, unlike conventional rotary wings, insects operate their wings at aerodynamically uneconomical and high angles of attack (AoA). Although insects have continuously received attention from biologists and aerodynamicists, the high AoA operation in insect flight has not been clearly explained. Here, we used a theoretical blade-element model to examine the impact of wing inertia on the power requirement and flapping AoA, based on 3D free-hovering flight wing kinematics of a horned beetle, The relative simplicity of the model allowed us to search for the best AoA distributed along the wingspan, which generate the highest vertical force per unit power. We show that, although elastic elements may be involved in flight muscles to store and save energy, the insect still has to use substantial power to accelerate its wings, because inertial energy stores should be used to overcome aerodynamic drag before being stored elastically. At the same flapping speed, a wing operating at a higher AoA requires lower inertial torque, and therefore lower inertial power output, at stroke reversals than a wing operating at an aerodynamically optimal low AoA. An interactive aerodynamic-inertial effect thereby enables the wing to flap at sufficiently high AoA, which causes an aerodynamically uneconomical flight in an effort to minimize the net flight energy.

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Section: Wing Kinematics Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Wing inertia as a cause of aerodynamically uneconomical flight with high angles-of-attack in hovering insects

Phan

2018

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…For such spanwise varying wing geometry, the flow is expected to be fully three dimensional. On the other hand, Clawson et al [28] have reported flapping wing aerodynamics with a similar blade element approach without a three-dimensional correction. Their aerodynamic model agrees well with a series of experimental flight data, further suggesting that three-dimensional effects may not always be a dominant factor in flapping wing aerodynamics.…”

Section: Unsteady Aerodynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of spanwise flexibility on the performance of flapping flyers in forward flight

Kodali

Medina

Kang

et al. 2017

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Flying animals possess flexible wings that deform during flight. The chordwise flexibility alters the wing shape, affecting the effective angle of attack and hence the surrounding aerodynamics. However, the effects of spanwise flexibility on the locomotion are inadequately understood. Here, we present a two-way coupled aeroelastic model of a plunging spanwise flexible wing. The aerodynamics is modelled with a two-dimensional, unsteady, incompressible potential flow model, evaluated at each spanwise location of the wing. The two-way coupling is realized by considering the transverse displacement as the effective plunge under the dynamic balance of wing inertia, elastic restoring force and aerodynamic force. The thrust is a result of the competition between the enhancement due to wing deformation and induced drag. The results for a purely plunging spanwise flexible wing agree well with experimental and high-fidelity numerical results from the literature. Our analysis suggests that the wing aspect ratio of the abstracted passerine and goose models corresponds to the optimal aeroelastic response, generating the highest thrust while minimizing the power required to flap the wings. At these optimal aspect ratios, the flapping frequency is near the first spanwise natural frequency of the wing, suggesting that these birds may benefit from the resonance to generate thrust.

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“…where x ∈ R n is the state, u ∈ R m is the control input, p ∈ R l is a vector of parameters, and x 0 is the initial condition [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][23][24][25][38][39][40][41]51,52,65,66]. A key feature that led to some of the first successful FWMAV flights is that the robot is minimally actuated to meet stringent size and weight constraints [26,39].…”

Section: Problem Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although many flapping-wing flight models have been proposed in the literature [16,23,24,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], methods for capturing the robot six-degree-of-freedom dynamics typically assume negligible wing inertia [15,16,39]. Other methods derive new aerodynamic forces and moments that capture unsteady flow effects on the wings by assuming symmetric flapping and pure longitudinal or hovering flight [19,24,25,42,47,[50][51][52][53].…”

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confidence: 99%

Full Flight Envelope and Trim Map of Flapping-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

Clawson¹,

Ferrari²,

Helbling³

et al. 2020

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

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Controlling agile and complex air-vehicle maneuvers requires knowledge of the full flight envelope and dominant modes of motion. This paper presents a comprehensive approach for determining the full flight envelope and trim map of minimally actuated flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles that are capable of a broad range of coupled longitudinal-lateral-directional aerobatic maneuvers. By this approach, a representative set of realizable set points and trim conditions can be determined from the flight dynamic model, including asymmetric and unstable maneuvers. Data-driven dynamic mode decomposition is used to identify and analyze the dominant modes of motion both in simulations and physical experiments involving the RoboBee. The dominant eigenplanes and stability characteristics of this flapping-wing robot are successfully validated experimentally for both stable and unstable asymmetric full-envelope maneuvers, including rapidly uncontrolled tumbling.

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A blade element approach to modeling aerodynamic flight of an insect-scale robot

Cited by 6 publications

References 19 publications

Wing inertia as a cause of aerodynamically uneconomical flight with high angles-of-attack in hovering insects

Wing inertia as a cause of aerodynamically uneconomical flight with high angles-of-attack in hovering insects

Effects of spanwise flexibility on the performance of flapping flyers in forward flight

Full Flight Envelope and Trim Map of Flapping-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

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