Study on wings of flying microrobots

The conventional method for calculating aerodynamic forces generated on objects is based on the aerodynamics in the high Reynolds number flow, like the airflow around the wings of airplanes, because little is known about the low Reynolds number flow. Using this method to calculate the aerodynamic force acting on a flying microrobot, the obtained results may differ from the actual values. For analysis of this difference. The large-scale models of wings for flying microrobots were made, whose wing lengths are 3 cm and 1.5 cm respectively. With these wings the experiments were done in the low Reynolds number flows (Re=385, 752). The drag forces measured in these experiments were compared with the ones from calculations. As a result, in both flows, the measured values were larger than the calculated one. Using semiconductor surface machining technology, we also fabricated a flapping mechanism with the wings that generate the difference of the drag forces during upstroke and downstroke movements.<<ETX>>