An Experimental Optimization of Flapping Wing Geometry in the Hover

Abstract

Flapping wing of flying insects is a source of motivation for the development of the Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAV), which can perform both the hover and forward flight with high maneuverability. An efficient design of FWMAV demands the meticulous analysis of the wing design space to obtain the best blend of wing parameters. In this research, we implemented a surrogate based experimental optimization process to enhance the flapping wing performance in the hover flight.

In nature, different insects have a distinct combination of wing geometric parameters and these insects produce the different degree of aerodynamic performance. To understand the consequences of varying the wing parameters on the flapping wing performance, we first investigate the effect of wing geometric parameters on the mean thrust and power efficiency using the iterative approach. The results show that wing geometric parameters like camber angle, non-dimensional radius of second moment of area and Aspect Ratio have a significant effect on the mean thrust generation and power efficiency. Then, to obtain an optimum wing design, we implemented a surrogate based experimental design optimization process. To consider the noise in the experimental data, a surrogate is constructed using a noisy Kriging model. The objective of this optimization process is to maximize the power efficiency. A new design point, with camber angle of 9.56780, non-dimensional radius of second moment of area of 0.5876 and aspect ratio of 8.2925, obtained from this optimization process produced the maximum power efficiency than any other wings. At 26.67 Hz of flapping frequency, this wing generates 20.89 gf of thrust force. The flight capability of this optimized wing is verified by using a wired flight with stabilizer.