Analysis and Fabrication of Unconventional Flapping Wing Air Vehicles

Abstract

ßRecently, numerous research groups are actively studying the design of the flapping wing air vehicles (FWAV). The FWAV was inspired by flying birds and insects. The lift and thrust forces are simultaneously generated from the flapping motion. The FWAV design is classified into either a biomimetic design or a biomorphic design. First, the bird-mimicking FWAV, which has one pair of wings, is fabricated as a biomimetic design. The driving mechanism is simplified to implement the flapping motion in the vertical plane. Second, unconventional FWAVs, which are the X-type wing FWAV, two pairs of X-type wings FWAV and three pairs of X-type wings FWAV, are developed to improve the performance of the bird-mimicking FWAV. The X-type wing FWAV is developed as a biomorphic design. The two pairs of X-type wings FWAV and three pairs of X-type wings FWAV are developed as a combination of the biomimetic and biomorphic designs. Various flight tests are carried out and the performances of FWAVs are analyzed by measuring the thrust-to-weight ratio and the lift-to-weight ratio. The results indicate that the unconventional FWAV with an appropriate combination of biomimetic and biomorphic designs has superior performance to the bird-mimicking FWAVs with a biomimetic design.