Wing Flexibility Induced Control Reversal For Flapping Wing Vehicles: Observation and Evaluation

摘要

Control reversal due to wing flexibility is of concern when designing maneuver-able aircrafts. Experiments with prototype minimally actuated flapping wing micro air vehicles, using split-cycle constant period frequency modulation for control, revealed a control effect reversal when relying on wing flexibility to produce desired wing rotations. When controlling the cycle-averaged forward translational force or rolling moment using split-cycle constant period frequency modulation; as the wing stroke symmetric frequency is increased, the effect of a fixed split-cycle command reverses. This study investigates a series of experiments using a prototype flapping wing micro air vehicle with constrained movement. High speed video cameras are used to capture a top view of the vehicle in motion and using custom software, the resulting images are traced and analyzed to produce an estimate of the motion of the wings in three dimensional space. This data is fed to a quasi-steady aerodynamic model to estimate the forces and moments produced by the vehicle thus verifying that the model is able to capture the observed phenomenon. A companion paper investigates the same phenomenon using a theoretical analysis which is compared to the empirically based estimates obtained in this study.