| The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies and Project Ornithopter are currently in the process of taxi testing a prototype piloted engine-powered ornithopter, or flapping-wing aircraft. A flight simulator for the ornithopter has been developed in order to evaluate design changes, experiment with takeoff and flight strategies, and help train the pilot. It is written in C++ using the object-oriented paradigm. The simulator takes keyboard input and displays the output as a line drawing of the ornithopter. It solves the equations of motion using a time-marching integration method. Many of the forces on the ornithopter are calculated analytically at each time step. The forces generated by the flapping-wing are extracted from a table generated by another computer program written by Rambod Larijani. The simulator gives adequate results although it could be improved by increasing the accuracy of the input data. The team has used it to evaluate the optimum design for an additional wing, study possible landing-gear changes, and analyze potential takeoff strategies. |
