Improved Testing Practices for Wing Designs of an Ornithopter

From Ahmed Hashish July 26th, 2022

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Co-Contributors: Ze Feng Gan and Dr. Rungun Nathan

Modern aircraft are designed with maximum efficiency in mind, and over the past four decades major advancements in air travel have been used to improve aircrafts. While research continues to improve upon this mode of transportation, birds stand above the manmade aircraft, both in terms of flight range and capability. This study aimed to explore the efficiencies of three wing designs for a machine designed to mimic a bird, called an ornithopter, and improve testing practices to aid in future research. This was achieved by developing a load cell device for the ornithopter which measured the forces generated by each wing type over time, as well as measuring the current drawn from the battery. Each wing was compared by divided the force generated (in grams) by the power required to produce that force (in watts).

The results demonstrated an increase in performance at 20% throttle from the original set of wings (labeled O1W1) which generated 36.4 grams of lift per watt, compared to both the smaller wings (O2W2) at 75.7g/W and hinged wings (O2W3) at 81.6g/W. At 35% thrust, these numbers were 27.1g/W, 76.9g/W, and 60.6g/W respectively. While O2W3 did outperform O1W1 in upwards lift, there was an excess of downwards thrust generated - 38.9g/W compared to O1W1 with 9.8g/W and O2W2 with 4.2g/W. These methods allow future researchers to test various wing and body design, and these results provide baseline numbers for future work.

Tags: reuornithoptermechanical engineering

Creative Commons: CC-BY-NC
Open Educational Resources (OER): OER
Appears In: MC_REU 2022

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Improved Testing Practices for Wing Designs of an Ornithopter

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