Revista de Engenharia Aeronáutica e Aeroespacial
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The Influence of Flexibility on Turbulent Aerodynamic Forces

Priyadarshini Jha

The flapping Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) has been a hot research area in the last two decades, inspired by the agile flight of natural flying creatures, and many protocols have been developed, such as the Nano Hummingbird invented by AeroVironment Inc., Delfly by Delft University of Technology, and Robobee by Harvard University. Initially, designers focused on emulating the wing motions of natural flyers, but recently, much more attention has been placed on the optimum design for lift augmentation, drag reduction, and power efficiency enhancement. Passive wing deformation caused by structural flexibility has been demonstrated to improve aerodynamic performance of both insects and MAVs. Insect wing deformation is often classified as spanwise bending, spanwise twisting, and chordwise camber. Wing deformation in spanwise bending and chordwise camber is advantageous for increasing aerodynamic force, whereas spanwise twist increases power efficiency. MAV wings, which are made up of veins and membrane, resemble insect wings. The aerodynamics of MAV wings differ significantly from those of their natural counterparts due to changes in wing architecture and material properties. As a result, flapping MAV designers explored the relationship between aerodynamic performance and wing structures in order to discover the best structural design. All of these research and discoveries provide us with a useful reference for optimising wing aerodynamics by leveraging wing flexibility. The spanwise stiffness of the wing was discovered to be three times more than the chordwise stiffness, implying that chordwise deformation is substantially more severe than spanwise deformation.