可差动扭转扑翼飞行器的设计和风洞试验研究

常规的仿鸟扑翼飞行器在飞行时机翼只是单纯地上下扑动。为提高扑翼飞行器横航向和航迹控制的品质,设计了一种机翼在扑动的同时可差动扭转的仿鸟扑翼飞行器;在低速风洞中对其进行了一系列测力试验,研究了可差动扭转扑翼飞行器的升力、推力特性,以及机翼差动扭转角、扑动频率、风速、机翼柔性对滚转力矩系数的影响;对设计的扑翼飞行器做了飞行试验,验证了设计的可行性,并与常规扑翼飞行器作了对比,试验结果表明：可差动扭转扑翼可以用于扑翼飞行器的横向控制,并且可以提高其抗风能力和航迹控制精度。     

扑翼飞行器平面形状对气动力的影响研究

为了了解扑翼飞行器在扑动过程中的气动力,采用非定常涡格法模拟扑动过程中的气动力计算,得到了刚性扑翼在扑动周期内气动力的变化及尾涡的形态。在此基础上,研究了扑翼的周期平均气动力随扑动频率、幅度、迎角及来流速度的变化关系,并进一步研究了不同的机翼平面形状对气动力的影响。计算结果表明,迎角和扑动频率的增大能够增加扑翼的升力,不同翼面形状的扑翼在升力特性及推力特性方面具有不同的优势。     

主动变形扑翼飞行器的设计和风洞测力试验研究

主动变形扑翼可以模仿鸟翼飞行时的复杂运动。为了了解主动变形扑翼飞行器的气动特性,在研究鸟类骨骼结构和翅膀及尾翼运动规律的基础上,设计并制造了一种基于机器人技术的主动变形扑翼飞行器;给出了主动变形扑翼飞行器的机构运动规律函数,并设计出机构运动控制系统;在低速风洞中对此飞行器进行了一系列测力试验,研究了主动变形扑翼的升力、推力特性,以及风速、扑动频率、扑动幅度、伸展相位等参数对升力和推力的影响,并与常规扑翼进行了对比分析。试验结果表明,较之常规扑翼,主动变形扑翼可以显著增加升力和增强对不同飞行状态的适应能力。     

风洞试验绳牵引冗余并联机器人的刚度增强与运动控制

 以一种应用于低速风洞试验的6自由度绳牵引冗余并联机器人为研究对象,解决飞行器模型在风荷作用下动态定位误差大、力学测量精度不高的问题。运用微分变换推导了该机器人的刚度解析表达式;分别建立了末端执行器和驱动系统的动力学模型;针对系统冗余驱动、强耦合和非线性的特点,设计了基于刚度增强准则的关节空间比例微分（PD）修正前馈控制器,实现了以提高飞行器升力方向、顺风向和俯仰转动方向刚度为目标的绳系张力优化分配。数值仿真算例表明,与基于张力极小准则的控制器相比,前者有效地提高了飞行器的动态定位精度。     

微型扑翼仿生“0”字和“8”字型扑动方式气动特性研究

微型扑翼飞行器的气动特性由扑翼的运动规律所决定,为了研究复杂翼梢轨迹对扑翼气动特性的影响,通过对上下扑动、弦向扭转和前后掠动三个自由度的运动设计不同的参数,运用数值模拟方法研究微型扑翼采用仿生"0"字形和"8"字形运动时的气动特性.结果表明:相比于传统的扑动运动,增加了扫掠运动的"0"字形和"8"字形扑动可有效增加升力,特别是"8"字形扑动的增升效果更加显著,但同时也会造成阻力略增,可以通过调整扭转角度来增加推力.本文的研究结果可为复杂运动规律下微型扑翼飞行器设计提供参考.     

微型扑翼飞行器风洞试验初步研究

 为了对微型扑翼飞行器空气动力学基本特性进行定量研究，利用西北工业大学微型飞行器专用风洞对微型扑翼飞行器机翼进行初步风洞吹风试验。试验中进行了扑动频率、风速、迎角、机翼平面形状、翼型弯度对机翼气动特性影响的研究。通过试验得出了微型扑翼飞行器升力、推力产生的基本规律，为微型扑翼飞行器总体设计和气动设计提供了参考。     

微型扑翼飞行器推力特性试验

通过进行微型扑翼飞行器低速风洞试验,研究了扑动翼展弦比、刚度和弯度对其推力特性的影响.制作了展弦比为2,4.和7以及带弯度与不带弯度的矩形扑动翼,并对三种不同刚度大小的矩形扑动翼进行了结构变形分析;试验风速变化范围从4 m/s到10 m/s,扑动频率从4 Hz到8 Hz.风洞试验结果表明适当的增大扑动翼展弦比或减小扑动翼刚度有助于提高扑翼飞行器的推进效率;而扑动翼翼型弯度的增加不利于推力特性的提高.      

仿蜻蜓扑翼飞行器机构设计及气动力研究

针对蜻蜒扑翼飞行机理与鸟类单翼飞行机理的不同,设计了一种双翅翼空间四杆扑翼机构,提出了一种非对称刚度柔性翅翼.该翅翼上拍时刚度较小,下拍时刚度较大,上拍时翅翼变形比下拍时翅翼变形大,空气阻力较小,可以提高每个拍动周期中的等效升力,从而有效减小飞行器飞行时的能耗速度,提高飞行效率.基于非定常空气动力学原理,建立了仿蜻蜒扑翼飞行器的动力学模型,对双翼挥拍过程中不同相位差下的升阻特性进行了分析,可为飞行过程中扑动模式的选择提供参考.     

扑翼飞行器非定常气动特性研究

为了研究复杂的非定常运动状态下扑翼飞行器翅翼的气动特性,针对自行研制的一种仿鸟扑翼飞行器建立了翅翼二维非定常空气动力学模型.基于该模型,通过用MATLAB编制计算升力系数和推力系数的程序,计算并分析了各运动参数对升力和推力特性的影响.结果表明,相位差对推力系数的影响较大,而升力系数随迎角的变化较快.     

仿蜻蜓扑动机构改进及气动力/力矩测量

为进一步提高扑翼微型飞行器的机动性能,对前期提出的可移动铰链曲柄滑块扑动机构进行了改进和小型化。该机构运动学表明:移动铰链后两侧翅膀扑动幅值差值从之前的21.3°增大到51.2°,同时平均扑动幅值降到0°。研制了可快速模块化组装的碳纤维板仿蜻蜓扑翼样机。样机测量和试飞实验表明,通过调节扑动频率可以明显改变样机的升力和推力,有效实现飞行器的快速爬升机动飞行。在较大扑动频率移动铰链可以产生足够的偏航力矩和滚转力矩用于转弯等机动飞行。      

The thrust and lift of an ornithopter's membrane wings with simple flapping motion

Human beings flying with the help of aircrafts of various kinds have been able to fly for about one century. Although the flapping wings of animals served as an inspiration to pioneers of human flight, we don't really understand how they work. In this study, we employ the concept of four-bar linkage to design a flapping mechanism which simulates a flapping motion of a bird. Wind tunnel tests were performed to measure the lift and thrust of the mechanical membrane flapping wing under different frequency, speed, and angle of attack. It is observed that the flexibility of the wing structure will affect the thrust and lift force due to its deformation at high flapping frequency. The lift force will increase with the increase of the flapping frequency under the corresponding flying speed. For the same flapping frequency, the flying speed can be increased by decrease of the angle of attack with the trade of loosing some lift force. An angle of attack is necessary in a simple flapping motion in order to derive a lift force. The flapping motion generates the thrust to acquire the flying speed. The flying speed and angle of attack combine to generate the lift force for flying.     

Recent progress in flapping wing aerodynamics and aeroelasticity

Micro air vehicles (MAVs) have the potential to revolutionize our sensing and information gathering capabilities in areas such as environmental monitoring and homeland security. Flapping wings with suitable wing kinematics, wing shapes, and flexible structures can enhance lift as well as thrust by exploiting large-scale vortical flow structures under various conditions. However, the scaling invariance of both fluid dynamics and structural dynamics as the size changes is fundamentally difficult. The focus of this review is to assess the recent progress in flapping wing aerodynamics and aeroelasticity. It is realized that a variation of the Reynolds number (wing sizing, flapping frequency, etc.) leads to a change in the leading edge vortex (LEV) and spanwise flow structures, which impacts the aerodynamic force generation. While in classical stationary wing theory, the tip vortices (TiVs) are seen as wasted energy, in flapping flight, they can interact with the LEV to enhance lift without increasing the power requirements. Surrogate modeling techniques can assess the aerodynamic outcomes between two- and three-dimensional wing. The combined effect of the TiVs, the LEV, and jet can improve the aerodynamics of a flapping wing. Regarding aeroelasticity, chordwise flexibility in the forward flight can substantially adjust the projected area normal to the flight trajectory via shape deformation, hence redistributing thrust and lift. Spanwise flexibility in the forward flight creates shape deformation from the wing root to the wing tip resulting in varied phase shift and effective angle of attack distribution along the wing span. Numerous open issues in flapping wing aerodynamics are highlighted.     

微型扑翼飞行器扑翼/尾翼气动干扰的数值研究

以二维刚性约束条件下的微型扑翼飞行器模型为研究对象,在动网格技术基础上,应用非定常数值分析手段对比分析了单翼/纵列翼布局的气动性能,深入研究了纵列翼缩减频率、扑翼—尾翼无量纲水平间距、来流攻角对其气动性能的影响.结果表明:①纵列翼尾翼对扑翼产生正效应干扰,相对于单翼布局,扑翼—尾翼无量纲水平间距为0.5倍翼型弦长时的纵列翼布局的推力系数和推进效率分别增加28.7%和5.7%;②缩减频率是影响推力的关键参数,随着缩减频率的增加,脱落涡的强度增加,推力系数增大.对于单翼、纵列翼两种布局模式,当缩减频率在1.0附近时推进效率达到最优;③对于纵列翼布局,在扑翼—尾翼无量纲水平间距为1.1倍翼型弦长时推进效率达到峰值;④在0°~20°来流攻角变化范围内,随着来流攻角的增加,升力系数增加,推力系数减小,当来流攻角大于9°时,两种布局的推力均为负值.      

A review of bird-like flapping wing with high aspect ratio

Bird-like flapping-wing vehicles with a high aspect ratio have the potential to fulfill missions given to micro air vehicles, such as high-altitude reconnaissance, surveillance, rescue, and bird group guidance, due to their good loading and long endurance capacities. Biologists and aeronautical researchers have explored the mystery of avian flight and made efforts to reproduce flapping flight in bioinspired aircraft for decades. However, the cognitive depth from theory to practice is still very limited. The mechanism of generating sufficient lift and thrust during avian flight is still not fully understood. Moving wings with unique biological structures such as feathers make modeling, simulation, experimentation, and analysis much more difficult. This paper reviews the research progress on bird-like flapping wings from flight mechanisms to modeling. Commonly used numerical computing methods are briefly compared. The aeroelastic problems are also highlighted. The results of the investigation show that a leading-edge vortex can be found during avian flight. Its induction and maintenance may have a close relationship with wing configuration, kinematics and deformation. The present models of flapping wings are mainly two-dimensional airfoils or three-dimensional single root-jointed geometric plates, which still exhibit large differences from real bird wings. Aeroelasticity is encouraged to consider the nonignorable effect on aerodynamic performance due to large-scale nonlinear deformation. Introducing appropriate flexibility can improve the peak values and efficiencies of lift and thrust, but the detailed conclusions always have strong background dependence.     

多段柔性变体扑翼飞行器设计

多段柔性变体扑翼模仿海鸥翅膀的复杂运动.观察海鸥翅膀的运动周期,设计了包含慢频率扑动、展向折弯、弦向扭转和结构柔性变形的扑翼模型,并应用准定常方法计算气动力,为该扑翼飞行器设计提供依据.在CATIA和3DMAX中设计多段柔性变体扑翼机的三维模型和运动模拟,制作样机进行飞行试验,研究其平飞、爬升、偏航等飞行姿态,结果表明升力和推力与数值计算结果吻合.相较于原有扑翼飞行器,多段柔性变体扑翼飞行器可以慢频率扑动飞行,调整扑翼形状.      

Lift performance enhancement for flapping airfoils by considering surging motion

The flapping motion has a great impact on the aerodynamic performance of flapping wings. In this paper, a surging motion is added to an airfoil performing pitching-plunging combined motion to figure out how it influences the lift performance and flow pattern of flapping airfoils. Firstly, the numerical methods are validated by a NACA0012 airfoil pitching case and a NACA0012 airfoil plunging case. Then, the E377m airfoil which has typical geometric characteristics of the bird-like airfoil is selected as the calculation model to study how phase differences φ₁ between surging motion and plunging motion affect the aerodynamic performance of flapping airfoils. The results show that the airfoil with surging motion has comprehensively better lift performance and thrust performance than the airfoil without surging motion when 15°< φ₁ < 90°. It is demonstrated that surging motion has a powerful ability to improve the aerodynamic performance of flapping airfoil by adjusting φ₁. Finally, to further explore how flapping airfoil improves lift performance by considering surging motion, the flapping motions of E377m airfoil with the highest lift coefficient and lift efficiency are obtained through trajectory optimization. The surging motion is removed in the highest lift case and highest lift efficiency case respectively, and the mechanism that surging motion adjusts the aerodynamic force is analyzed in detail by comparing the vortex structure and kinematic parameters. The results of this paper help reveal the aerodynamic mechanism of bird flight and guide the design of Flapping wing Micro Air Vehicles (FMAV).     

基于扇翼机翼升推力机理的吹气机翼研究

基于对扇翼飞行器升推力产生机理的数值计算与分析，提出了一种扇翼飞行器机翼的替代方案——吹气机翼。分析了扇翼机翼升推力的产生机理并在扇翼机翼翼型的基础上构建了吹气机翼翼型。建立了两种机翼翼型的数值计算方法，通过对比相对静压分布曲线、速度云图和压力云图，证明了吹气机翼具有与扇翼机翼一样的升推力产生方式，即涡致升推力的形成机制。通过将横流风扇加速后气流流速定义为吹气机翼吹气速度，对比了两种机翼升推力随来流速度和迎角的变化关系。结果表明:两种机翼的升推力变化趋势基本一致，仅在迎角大于20°时，吹气机翼推力值相较扇翼机翼损失了近5倍。总体而言，在常规飞行状态下，吹气机翼能够替代扇翼机翼，为相关飞行器的增升和优化设计提供了一种思路。      

Aerodynamic performance of owl-like airfoil undergoing bio-inspired flapping kinematics

Natural flyers have extraordinary flight skills and their prominent aerodynamic performance has attracted a lot of attention. However, the aerodynamic mechanism of birds' flapping wing kinematics still lacks in-depth understanding. In this paper, the aerodynamic performance of owl-like airfoil undergoing bio-inspired flapping kinematics extracted from a free-flying owl wing has been numerically investigated. The overset mesh technique is used to deal with the large range movements of flapping airfoils. The bio-inspired kinematics consist of plunging and pitching movement. A pure sinusoidal motion and a defined motion composed of plunging of sinusoidal motion and pitching of the bio-inspired kinematics are selected for comparison. The other two NACA airfoils are also selected to figure out the advantages of the owl-like airfoil. It is found that the cambered owl-like airfoil can enhance lift during the downstroke. The bio-inspired kinematics have an obvious advantage in lift generation with a presence of higher peak lift and positive lift over a wider proportion of the flapping cycle. Meanwhile, the bio-inspired motion is more economical for a lower power consumption compared with the sinusoidal motion. The sinusoidal flapping motion is better for thrust generation for a higher peak thrust value in both upstroke and downstroke, while the bio-inspired kinematics mainly generate thrust during the downstroke but produce more drag during the upstroke. The defined motion has similar lift performance with the bio-inspired kinematics, while it consumes more energy and generates less thrust. The unsteady flow field around airfoils is also analyzed to explain the corresponding phenomenon. The research in this paper is helpful to understand the flight mechanism of birds and to design a micro air vehicle with higher performance.