Development and Testing of a 3 DOF Tandem Flapping Wing Mechanism

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Havacılık ve Uzay Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2014

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: Talha Mutlu

Danışman: Dilek Funda Kurtuluş

Özet:

Scope of the thesis is to develop a tandem flapping wing mechanism, capable of mimicking the insect flight, in order to investigate the 3-D complex nature of the flow around the flapping wings. Thus, valuable data about the unsteady aerodynamics of such flow can be obtained in order to provide necessary knowledge for development of future Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). The mechanism is equipped with a state of art multi axial force and torque sensor. By placing the sensor to the root chord of the wing, any force and moment that are exerted to wing can be measured in real-time. In order to design the mechanism, wing trajectories of various insect and birds are investigated. Moreover; different flapping MAVs and flapping wing test setups are examined to provide a better understanding of existing flapping wing technology. By doing so, requirements for a new mechanism are decided. The mechanism has a robotic wrist, enabling the rotation in three axis, which are driven by three motor for each wing. A custom made micro controller with embedded software ‘Wing-Sim’ governs the motor drivers, sensors and data transfer between the main computer and wings. Furthermore; different wing trajectories can be performed and logged by Wing-Sim. During the vi experiments a bio-inspired wing measuring 24 cm span and 8 cm chord, with 3 mm thickness flat plate airfoils are used. Calibration and validation test of the system are completed and presented in the results. .