| Lately, micro air vehicles (MAVs), with a maximum dimension of 15 cm and nominal flight speed around 10m/s, have attracted interest from scientific and engineering communities due to their potential to perform desirable flight missions and exhibit unconventional aerodynamics, control, and structural characteristics, compared to larger flight vehicles. Since MAVs operate at a Reynolds number of 105 or lower, the lift-to-drag ratio is noticeably lower than the larger manned flight vehicles. The light weight and low flight speed cause MAVs to be sensitive to wind gusts. The MAV's small overall dimensions result in low aspect ratio wings with strong wing tip vortices that further complicate the aerodynamics of such vehicles. In this work, two vehicle concepts are considered, namely, fixed wings with flexible structure aimed at passive shape control, and flapping wings aimed at enhancing aerodynamic performance using unsteady flow fields. A finite volume, pressure-based Navier-Stokes solver along with moving grid algorithms is employed to simulate the flow field. The coupled fluid-structural dynamics of the flexible wing is treated using a hyperelastic finite element structural model, the above-mentioned fluid solver via the moving grid technique, and the geometric conservation law. Three dimensional aerodynamics around a low aspect ratio wing for both rigid and flexible structures and fluid-structure interactions for flexible structures have been investigated. In the Reynolds numbers range of 7x10 4 to 9x104, the flexible wing exhibits self-initiated vibrations even in steady free-stream, and is found to have a similar performance to the identical rigid wing for modest angles of attack. For flapping wings, efforts are made to improve our understanding of the unsteady fluid physics related to the lift generation mechanism at low Reynolds numbers (75 to 1,700). Alternative moving grid algorithms, capable of handling the large movements of the boundaries (characteristic of flapping wing kinematics) are tested. Two main hovering modes are investigated and compared with experimental and other computational efforts. The analysis shows that, while delayed-stall and rapid pitch-up mechanisms are responsible for most of the lift generation at a Reynolds numbers of O(100) and stroke amplitudes of O(1 chord), other mechanisms, including wake-capturing, are identified to contribute to the overall lift/drag force generation. The effect of the Reynolds number on hovering airfoil aerodynamics is also probed. |
