High-order method for modeling of aerodynamics of flapping wings: Airfoil-gust interaction

Abstract

The use of Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) with flapping wing motion has received considerable attention in the recent years due to their great potential in military and commercial applications. A number of analytical, experimental, and computational studies have been performed to investigate the aerodynamic performance of MAV. However, most of these studies have been performed under idealized operating conditions. Hence, there is a lack of detailed knowledge on the operation of MAV in complex flow environments including flights in wind gust and near obstacles. The current numerical study investigates the performance of a rigid MAV in the presence of periodic gust for two different kinematic motions: plunge and pitch. Two-dimensional rigid airfoils are taken as prototypes of MAVs wings. The gust is assumed to be sinusoidal and modeled as a source term in the Navier-Stokes equations to avoid the implementation of special boundary conditions. The investigation showed a significant drop in the average lift force for the plunging motion in the presence of the gust compared to the pitching motion. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.