• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.256-261
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• 2016

An insect-like flapping-wing flying-robot should be able to produce flight forces and control moments at the same time only by flapping wings, because there is no control surface at tail just like an insect. In this paper, design principles for the flapping mechanism and control moment generator are briefly explained, characteristics measured force and moment generations of the robot are presented, and finally controlled flight of the flying robot is demonstrated. The present insect-like robot comprises a lightweight flapping mechanism that can produce a flapping angle larger than $180^{\circ}$ and a control moment generator that produces pitch, roll, and yaw moments by adjusting location of the trailing edges at the wing roots. The measured force and moment data show that the control input angles less than $9^{\circ}$ would not significantly reduce the vertical force generation. It is also observed that the pitch, roll, and yaw control moments are produced only by the corresponding control input. The simple PID control theory is used for the controlled flight of the flying robot, controlling pitch, roll, and yaw motions. The flying robot successfully demonstrated controlled flight for about 40 seconds.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.8-16
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• 2009

An experimental study was carried out to investigate aerodynamic characteristics on reduced frequency of flapping wings. The half span of the wing is 28cm, and the mean chord length of wing is 10cm. In flight, the Reynolds Number range of birds is about $10^4$, and the reduced frequency during a level flight is 0.25. The experimental variables of present study were set to have similar conditions with the bird flight's one. The freestream velocities in a wind tunnel were 2.50, 3.75 and $5.00^m/s$, and the corresponding Reynolds numbers were $1.7{\times}10^4$, $2.5{\times}10^4$ and $3.3{\times}10^4$, respectively. The wing beat frequencies of an experimental model were 2, 3 and 4Hz, and the corresponding reduced frequency was decided between 0.1 and 0.5. Aerodynamic forces of an experimental flapping model were measured by using 2 axis load-cell. Inertial forces measured in a vacuum chamber were removed from measuring forces in the wind tunnel in order to acquire pure aerodynamic forces. Hall sensors and laser trigger were used to make sure the exact position of wings during the flapping motion. Results show that the ratio of downstroke in a wing beat cycle is increased as a wing beat frequency increases. The instantaneous lift coefficient is the maximum value at the end of downstroke of flapping wing model. It is found that a critical reduced frequency with large lift coefficient is existed near k=0.25.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.225-232
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• 2019

In recent years, nonlinear dynamic models have been developed for flapping-type energy harvesting systems with a rigid wing, but not for those with a flexible wing. Thus, in this study, flexible wing designs of NACA0012 section are proposed and measurements of the forces of rigid cambered wings, which are used to estimate the performance of the designed wings, are conducted. Polar curves from the measured lift and drag coefficients show that JavaFoil estimation is much closer to the measured values than Eppler over the entire given range of angles of attack. As the camber of the rigid cambered wings is increased, both the lift and drag coefficients increase, in turn increasing the resultant forces. Moreover, the maximum resultant forces for all rigid cambered wings are achieved at the same angle of attack as the maximum lift coefficient, meaning that the lift coefficient is dominant in representations of the wing characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.753-760
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• 2007

In a 3-D flapping motion, the spanwise flow is generated while the wing is moved on the stroke plane. And at the end of each stroke, the rotational circulation is generated due to a wing rotation. In this study, to evaluate the effect of spanwise flow and wing rotation on the aerodynamic characteristics in 3-D flap 753ping motion, a 3-D flapping motion was compared with a 2-D translating motion. In each flapping motion, the aerodynamic forces were measured with respect to the angles of attack and Reynolds number. The aerodynamic forces generated by 2-D translating motion were higher than those generated by 3-D flapping motion. While the lift of 3-D flapping motion was increased until the angle of attack $60^{\circ}$ at mid-stroke, the lift generated by 2-D translating motion was decreased above the angle of attack 40° at mid stroke. Also, at the end of each stroke, the aerodynamic forces were increased rapidly due to wing rotation.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2015

This paper investigates the longitudinal flight dynamics and stability of flapping-wing micro air vehicles. Periodic external forces and moments due to the flapping motion characterize the dynamics of this system as NLTP (Non Linear Time Periodic). However, the averaging theorem can be applied to an NLTP system to obtain an NLTI (Non Linear Time Invariant) system which allows us to use a standard eigen value analysis to assess the stability of the system with linearization around a reference point. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics and stability of a hawkmoth-scale flapping-wing air vehicle by establishing an LTI (Linear Time Invariant) system model around a hovering condition. Also, a direct time integration of full nonlinear equations of motion of the flapping-wing micro air vehicle is conducted to see how the longitudinal flight dynamics appear in the time domain beyond the reference point, i.e. hovering condition. In the study, the flapping-wing air vehicle exhibited three distinct dynamic modes of motion in the longitudinal plane of motion: two stable subsidence modes and one unstable oscillatory mode. The unstable oscillatory mode is found to be a combination of a pitching velocity state and a forward/backward velocity state.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.14-21
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• 2006

The unsteady vortex lattice method is used to model twisting and flapping motions of a rectangular flat plate wing. The results for plunging and pitching motions were compared with the limited experimental results available and other numerical methods. They show that the method is capable of simulating many of the features of complex flapping flight. The lift, thrust and propulsive efficiency of a rectangular flat plate wing have been calculated for various twisting angles and reduced frequency with an amplitude of flapping angle($20^{\circ}$). And the effects of the twisting on the aerodynamic characteristics of the flapping wing are discussed by examination of their trends.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.55-62
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• 2006

This paper presents experimental evaluation of an insect-mimicking flapping-wing device actuated by a unimorph piezoceramic actuator. Length of each rod and hinge point in the linkage/amplification system are carefully chosen such that the resulting wing motion can mimic clapping of wings in a real insect at the end of upstroke. In addition to this, a pair of corrugated wings are fabricated mimicking zig-zag cross section of a real insect wing. Thanks to the two additional implementation, the improved flapping wing device can generate a larger lift force than the previous model even though area of the new wing is about 50% less than that of the previous wing. In this work, effects of the wing clapping, the wing corrugation, and the input wave form on the lift force generation have been also experimentally investigated. Finally, the vortex generated by the flapping device has been captured by a high speed camera, showing that vortices are produced during up- and down-strokes.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2008

A flow visualization is conducted to investigate a flight characteristics of a Coleoptera and an effect of flapping elytra was considered in this study. Also the movements of outer wing(elytra) and inner wing is analyzed using High Speed Camera. As a result of this experiment, in case of flapping insect, three mechanisms to generate lift is confirmed. A small movement of outer wing(elytra) is confirmed and the effect of outer wing(elytra) is estimated.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.217-220
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• 2006

The lift and drag forces produced by a wing of a given cross-sectional profile are dependent on the wing planform and the angle of attack. Aspect ratio is the ratio of the wing span to the average chord. For conventional fixed wing aircrafts, high aspect ratio wings produce a higher lift to drag ratio than low ones for flight at subsonic speeds. Therefore, high aspect ratio wings are used on aircraft intended for long endurance. However, birds and insects flap their wings to fly in the air and they can change their wing motions. Their wing motions are made up of translation and rotation. Therefore, we tested flapping motions with parameters which affect rotational motion such as the angle of attack and the wing beat frequency. The half elliptic shaped wings were designed with the variation of aspect ratio from 4 to 11. The flapping device was operated in the water to reduce the wing beat frequency according to Reynolds similarity. In this study, the aerodynamic forces, the time-averaged force coefficients and the lift to drag ratio were measured at Reynolds number 15,000 to explore the aerodynamic characteristics with the variation of aspect ratio. The maximum lift coefficient was turned up at AR=8. The mean drag coefficients were almost same values at angle of attack from $10^{\circ}$ to $40^{\circ}$ regardless of aspect ratio, and the mean drag coefficients above angle of attack $50^{\circ}$ were decreased according to the increase of aspect ratio. For flapping motion the maximum mean lift to drag ratio appeared at AR=8.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.759-764
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• 2003

Numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the mechanism of hovering flight by single flapping wing, and to examine the effect of the phase difference between the fore- and hindwings in hovering flight by two flapping wings. The numerical method used is based on an immersed boundary method in Cartesian coordinates. The Reynolds number considered is Re=150 based on the maximum translational velocity and chord length of the wing. For single flapping wing, the stroke plane angles are $0^{\circ}$, $30^{\circ}$, $60^{\circ}$, $75^{\circ}$ and $90^{\circ}$ and the downstroke angles of attack are varied for each stroke angle. Results show that for each stroke plane angle, there is an optimal angle of attack to maximize the vertical force. Below the stroke angle of $60^{\circ}$, wake capturing reduces the negative vertical force during the upstroke. For two flapping wings, The phase lags of the hindwing are $0^{\circ}$, $90^{\circ}$, $180^{\circ}$ and $270^{\circ}$. The amplitudes of the stroke are 2.5 and 4.0 times the chord length at each phase lag. The results show that maximum vertical force is generated when the phase lag is zero, and the amplitude of the vertical force is minimum at the phase lag of $180^{\circ}$.