Design Of Flapping Mechanism For A Micro Air Vehicle Based On Mathematical Morphology

Flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicle (FMAV) has novel locomotion method and involves many advanced technologies. FMAV is becoming a hotspot of research in recent year, and will have extensive military and civilian applications. The kinematic design and aerodynamics of flapping mechanism for a small flapping wing air vehicle are addressed in this thesis.The studies of experiments show that the wingtip of insect usually undergoes an 8-shape curve with the wing rotating when it is flying. Different from using optimization to design the flapping-wing mechanism, the theory of mathematical morphology is introduced to the mechanism design. The Shape Spectrum of 8-shape linkage curve is studied extensively. It is found that the conforming function widely used at present does not work well in distinguishing the 8-shape linkage curves. Based on the theory of Shape Spectrum, a set of parameters is proposed to characterize 8-shape linkage curve, and a new conforming function is proposed. In addition to these, a database is established according to these characteristic parameters.Based on the study of kinematics of hawkmoth, the database of 8-shape linkage curve is used to design the flapping-wing mechanism for a small flapping-wing air vehicle.An aerodynamic model is developed based on unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms for the purpose of aerodynamic analysis of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle.Finally, dynamics analysis of the mechanism is conducted using Pro/E.