This paper investigates a comparative study of unsteady aerodynamics measurement of Hawkmoth, Manduca Sexta wing and its quasi-steady aerodynamics estimation. Two flight regime: 1) Re=7500: real Hawkmoth's hovering regime, 2) Re=20000: normal micro ai...
This paper investigates a comparative study of unsteady aerodynamics measurement of Hawkmoth, Manduca Sexta wing and its quasi-steady aerodynamics estimation. Two flight regime: 1) Re=7500: real Hawkmoth's hovering regime, 2) Re=20000: normal micro air vehicles' (MAVs) operating regime, are tested in a water chamber with a scaled Hawkmoth wing model. For the quasi-steady estimation, a translational force component is modeled from lift and drag coefficient curves measured from a steady aerodynamics measurement of Re=8071. In addition, rotational force component is also modeled in the quasi-steady aerodynamic model for this comparative study. Results showed that the flapping cycle-averaged mean aerodynamic coefficients are well matched. In terms of time-varying sense, maximum aerodynamic peaks are well captured with quasi steady estimation, and peaks generated from rotational force components are also captured. However, peaks from wake-capture could not be properly estimated. This study provides a feasibility of applying reduced order aerodynamic model to a multibody dynamics based 6DOF flight simulation environment for insect-inspired flapping wing MAVs.