Tethered vs. Free Flight Force Determination of the DelFly II Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle

Date

2014-01-01

Author

Caetano, J. V.
Perçin, Mustafa
de Visser, C. C.
van Oudheusden, B.
de Croon, G. C. H. E.
de Wagter, C.
Remes, B.
Mulder, M.

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

45
views

0
downloads

The determination of dynamic forces acting on a Flapping Wing Micro Aerial Vehicle (FWMAV) is a challenging task due to the unsteady nature of force generation mechanisms. To assure a proper force identification in future researches, this work compares two different methods to obtain the longitudinal forces acting on FWMAVs and discusses their applicability regions. The methods were 1) calculation of forces from the recordings of the FWMAV's position in a free flight condition; 2) direct force measurements in a tethered flight condition in a wind tunnel. The DelFly II is used as the FWMAV test platform in the measurements. During free flight experiments, its position and attitude were recorded at a rate of 200Hz using an external visual tracking system, whose acquired information was then analyzed to obtain the flight states and calculate the forces and moments that act on the platform during flight, under a set of kinematic assumptions. Subsequently, similar flight conditions were tested in the tethered situation. An ATI Nano-17 Titanium force transducer was used to measure time-resolved forces. The results for the most common flight regime of the DelFly, which is a slow forward flight at a high body pitch angle, are presented. It is shown that the tethered force balance tests agree with the free flight data when assessing the aerodynamic forces that are perpendicular to the stroke plane of the flapping wing. However, the forces that act along the stroke plane are coupled with structural dynamic terms, thus affecting the final lift and thrust identification. These results point to inadequate force identification in fixed point force measurements, due to effect the of the dynamic modes of the FWMAV body, thus advising proper cross-comparing between experimental methods.

Subject Keywords

Insect flight, Identification, Aerodynamics, Ornithopter, Stability

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/38412

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1109/icuas.2014.6842344

Collections

Department of Aerospace Engineering, Conference / Seminar

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Aeroservoelastic Modelling and Analysis of a Missile Control Surface with a Nonlinear Electromechanical Actuator Mehmet Ozan, Nalcı; Kayran, Altan (null; 2014-06-16) In this study, aeroservoelastic modeling and analysis of a missile control surface which is operated and controlled by a power limited, nonlinear electromechanical actuator is performed. Linear models of the control fin structure and aerodynamics together with the nonlinear servo-actuation system are built and integrated. The resulting aeroservoelastic system is analyzed both in time and frequency domain. Structural model of the control fin is based on the finite element model of the fin. Aerodynamic model ...
Aerodynamic design and performance analyses of grid fin in supersonic flow using design of experiments and computational fluid dynamics Dinçer, Erdem; Sezer Uzol, Nilay; Department of Aerospace Engineering (2022-2) Control surfaces are key components of missile aerodynamic performance that can create the necessary forces and moments to make maneuvers. Grid fins are unconventional control surfaces used for aerodynamic control of missiles. In this thesis, parametric design of grid fin is performed in terms of aerodynamic performance using Design of Experiments and Computational Fluid Dynamics. The 3-D, steady-state, compressible, viscous flow CFD simulations are performed for the complex grid fin geometries in supersoni...
Experimental analysis of 3-D sweeping wings Çakır, Hasan; Kurtuluş, Dilek Funda; Department of Aerospace Engineering (2015) The aim of this thesis is to modify the mechanism, which is capable of mimicking the insect flight and developed previously by the Aerospace Engineering Department, and to measure the forces and moments of three types of flapping wings fixed to this mechanism. The flapping wing design is a new research topic, comparably young area and can be the future for micro unmanned air vehicles. Time varying force and moment data obtained from the experiments conducted in water as part of this thesis can be used to de...
Experimental Investigation of Aerodynamics of Flapping-Wing Micro-Air-Vehicle by Force and Flow-Field Measurements Deng, Shuanghou; Perçin, Mustafa; van Oudheusden, Bas (2016-02-01) This study explores the aerodynamic characteristics of a flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle (MAV) in hovering configuration by means of force and flowfield measurements. The effects of flapping frequency and wing geometry on force generation were examined using a miniature six-component force sensor. Additional high-speed imaging allowed identification of the notable different deformation characteristics of the flexible wings under vacuum condition in comparison to their behavior in air, illustrating the re...
Aeroservoelastic analysis and robust controller synthesis for flutter suppression of air vehicle control actuation systems Akmeşe, Alper; Platin, Bülent Emre; Department of Mechanical Engineering (2006) Flutter is one of the most important phenomena in which aerodynamic surfaces become unstable in certain flight conditions. Since the 1930’s many studies were conducted in the areas of flutter prediction in design stage, research of design methods for flutter prevention, derivation and confirmation of flutter flight envelopes via tests, and in similar subjects for aircraft wings. With the use of controllers in 1960’s, studies on the active flutter suppression began. First the classical controllers were used....

Citation Formats

J. V. Caetano et al., “Tethered vs. Free Flight Force Determination of the DelFly II Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle,” 2014, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/38412.