Flow Control Using Flapping Wings for an Efficient Low-Speed Micro-Air Vehicle

A review is given of the research studies which led to the development of a flapping-wing propelled micro air vehicle which uses two oscillating wings in a biplane arrangement for propulsion and a fixed wing for lift generation. Computational and experimental studies are described which were conducted to obtain quantitative information about the thrust and propulsive efficiency offered by this choice. They included inviscid incompressible panel code as well as viscous Navier-Stokes computations, flow visualizations and flow measurements in water and wind tunnels as well as direct thrust measurements. It is shown that the placement of the fixed wing upstream but closely coupled to the two oscillating wings delays flow separation and therefore offers special advantages for flight operations at the low Reynolds numbers encountered by micro air vehicles.

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