DESIGN AND REALIZATION OF RESONANT MECHANSISMS FOR WING ACTUATION IN FLAPPING WING MICRO AIR VEHICLES

This paper shows the developments in the design and realization of a compliant structure that functions as a resonant mechanism to drive the wings of a flapping wing micro air vehicle. The inspiration for the application of resonance to drive a flapping wing structure is derived from resonant properties exhibited by the insect thorax-wing system. The base structure used for the resonant mechanism is a ring-type structure. Two different test structures are modeled and optimized after which they are realized and their performance reviewed.

[1]  R. Dudley.  The Biomechanics of Insect Flight: Form, Function, Evolution , 1999 .

[2]  C. T. Bolsman,et al.  Insect-inspired wing actuation structures based on ring-type resonators , 2008, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring.

[3]  A. R. Ennos.  INERTIAL AND AERODYNAMIC TORQUES ON THE WINGS OF DIPTERA IN FLIGHT , 1989 .

[4]  Gordon J. Berman,et al.  Energy-minimizing kinematics in hovering insect flight , 2007, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[5]  M. Goldfarb,et al.  The Development of Elastodynamic Components for Piezoelectrically Actuated Flapping Micro-Air Vehicles , 2002 .

[6]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Lift force improvements for the micromechanical flying insect , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[7]  Robert J. Wood,et al.  Design, fabrication, and analysis of a 3DOF, 3cm flapping-wing MAV , 2007, 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[8]  C. Ellington.  The novel aerodynamics of insect flight: applications to micro-air vehicles. , 1999, The Journal of experimental biology.