MAVs (micro air vehicles), with a maximal dimension of 15 cm and nominal flight speeds around 10 m/s, operate in a Reynolds number regime of 105 or lower, the same as that of most natural flyers, including insects, bats, and birds. Due to the light weight and low flight speed, the MAV’s flight characteristics are substantially affected by environmental factors such as wind gust and demonstrate distinguished features with fixed, rotary, and flapping wings. Like natural flyers, the wing structures of MAVs are often flexible and tend to deform during flight. Consequently, the aero/fluid and structural dynamics of these flyers are closely linked to each other, making the entire flight vehicle difficult to analyze. In this chapter, a prototype bio-inspired flapping MAV with flexible wings is described with a specific focus on the flexible-wing aerodynamics. The flapping-wing MAV has a weight of 2.4–3.0 g and a wingspan of 10–12 cm, which is comparable to hawk moths and hummingbirds. The MAV’s flexible-wing aerodynamics is analyzed by combining an in-house computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method and wind tunnel experiments (EXP). In addition, fixed-wing and rotary-wing MAVs with elements that enable the miniaturization of an aerial vehicle will be introduced.


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    Title :

    Development of Insect-Sized MAVs


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ; Chapter : 9 ; 1329-1358


    Publication date :

    2014-08-09


    Size :

    30 pages




    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English





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