Energy Absorption Behavior of a Hyperelastic Membrane for Micro Air Vehicle Wings: Experimental and Finite Element Approaches

摘要

The rubber latex membrane is used for micro air vehicles construction and plays an important role in their wings performance. This paper presents finite element (FE) models for investigating the deformation and energy absorption behavior of the latex membrane at static loading, validated by the experimental results. The membrane at different pre-tension levels are attached to a circular steel ring and statically loaded using steel spheres of different sizes placed at the center of the membrane. The deformation of the membrane is measured by the visual image correlation (VIC), a non-contact measurement system and strain energy is calculated based on the Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic material model. It is found that the deflection and strain energy of the membrane estimated by experiments and FE models are correlated well although discrepancy is expected among experimental and FE results within reasonable limits due to the variation of the thickness of the membrane. The deformation and energy absorption of the membrane increase with the weight of the sphere. But the deformation decreases and the energy absorption increases with increase of the pre-tension level of the membrane due to a specific weight of the sphere.