Dipteran wing motor-inspired flapping flight versatility and effectiveness enhancement

Abstract

Insects are a prime source of inspiration towards the development of small-scale, engineered, flapping wing flight systems. To help interpret the possible energy transformation strategies observed in Diptera as inspiration for mechanical flapping flight systems, we revisit the perspective of the dipteran wing motor as a bistable click mechanism and take a new, and more flexible, outlook to the architectural composition previously considered. Using a representative structural model alongside biological insights and cues from nonlinear dynamics, our analyses and experimental results reveal that a flight mechanism able to adjust motor axial support stiffness and compression characteristics may dramatically modulate the amplitude range and type of wing stroke dynamics achievable. This corresponds to significantly more versatile aerodynamic force generation without otherwise changing flapping frequency or driving force amplitude. Whether monostable or bistable, the axial stiffness is key to enhance compressed motor load bearing ability and aerodynamic efficiency, particularly compared with uncompressed linear motors. These findings provide new foundation to guide future development of bioinspired, flapping wing mechanisms for micro air vehicle applications, and may be used to provide insight to the dipteran muscle-to-wing interface.

Dynamics of a bistable Miura-origami structure

“…Note that bistability is a strong nonlinear characteristic with rich dynamics, some of which could be exploited for performance enhancement in various applications [35] such as energy harvesting [36][37][38][39], motion amplification [40,41], damping [42], sensing [43,44] and vibration cancelation [45] and isolation [46]. Despite its potential, the exploration of bistable dynamics in origami structures has never been pursued.…”

Theoretical and practical investigation into the use of a bio-inspired “click” mechanism for the flight motor of a micro air vehicle

“…18 The gear mechanism 18,19 was put together with a clutch mechanism recently by Deora et al 20 Based on the flight mechanism described in Thomson and Thompson, 9 Brennan et al 21 and Tang and Brennan 22 analyzed a simple mechanical model of the ''click'' mechanism with both linear and quadratic damping, to determine if it gives any mechanical advantage. Motivated by this work, Chin and Lau 23,24 and Lau et al 25 built a flapping-wing MAV, incorporating such a mechanism, and recently, Harne and Wang 26 used a compressed beam mechanism in a ''click'' mechanism for an MAV. Kok et al 27 used a quasi-steady blade-element method to analyze the asymmetrical flapping on the aerodynamic efficiency of half-span wing of the MAV with ''click'' mechanism which was built by Chin and Lau, 23,24 observing greater lift generation when the wing was excited below the natural frequency of the system.…”

“…Recent research on a flapping flight mechanism that utilizes the ''click'' mechanism has shown that, in certain circumstances, it has some advantages compared to that which uses a linear mechanism. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27] This is primarily for small devices where the natural frequency of the system is too high for resonance to be utilized as the wing flapping frequency. In such a case, it is necessary to flap the wings at a frequency well below the natural frequency, and in this case, the ''click'' mechanism has advantages.…”

Exploiting nonlinearity in a flapping wing mechanism of a bio inspired micro air vehicle to enhance energy efficiency

“…The common theme between different models is the nonlinearity in restoring force of the "flight mechanism". The benefit of such a nonlinear mechanism is attributed to an increase in the kinetic energy of the wings [13,14], modulation of the flapping amplitude [15] and an increase in the flapping speed during half of the flapping cycle [16]. In this paper, the energy efficiency of a flight mechanism is investigated by examining the active and reactive powers of a nonlinear oscillatory system.…”