International Journal of Aerospace and Lightweight Structures

doi: 10.3850/S2010428613000093

Computational Mechanics of a Coupled Flow-Structure Interaction Problem with Applications to Bio-Inspired Micro Air Vehicles

Rohan Banerjee¹ and Padmanabhan Seshaiyer^{2 1}Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, 6560 Braddock Road, Alexandria, VA 22312, USA. rohan.b.banerjee@gmail.com ²Department of Mathematical Sciences, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MS: 3F2, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. pseshaiy@gmu.edu

ABSTRACT

Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) are small flying vehicles that are designed to fit certain size and weight constraints. MAVs are important because they have a variety of practical applications, including surveillance and weather imaging. MAVs fall into two major cat- egories according to their lift mechanism, either fixed-wing or flapping-wing, and wing structure, either rigid or flexible. Much research has been devoted to fixed wing, flexible MAVs consisting of rigid stabilizing battens and a rigid central fuselage coupled with a flexible membrane. We used finite element software to implement a system of PDEs that represented the MAV wing. The goal of this study was to computationally verify qualitative results showing that varying the number of stabilizing battens and the angle of attack affected the wing deformation. The work will be extended to include rigor- ous stability estimates, which will provide a better understanding of flexible wing MAV aerodynamics, and nonlinear membrane models.

Keywords: Micro air vehicles, Multiphysics, Mechanics, PDE, Finite element method.

---

Back to TOC

FULL TEXT(PDF)