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Aerodynamic force generation of an insect-inspired flapper actuated by a compressed unimorph actuator

  • Articles/Bionic Engineering
  • Published:
Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

We examined experimentally the flapping performance in terms of aerodynamic force generation of an insect-inspired flapper actuated by both of original LIPCA and compressed LIPCA. Flapping tests for two artificial wing shapes of horse botfly and hawk moth were conducted at the wing rotation angle of 60° and a flapping frequency range from 6 Hz to 12 Hz to find the optimum flapping frequency and to investigate the effect of compressed LIPCA and wing shape on the force generation. Flapping tests in the vacuum were also undertaken to measure the induced inertia force. The aerodynamic force was calculated by subtracting the inertia force from the total force measured in the air. It was found that the average inertia force was relatively small when compared with the average total force. The use of the compressed LIPCA could significantly improve the flapping angle of the flapper from 110° to 130° (18.2% increase) resulting in 24.5% increase in the average aerodynamic force. It was also found that flapper with hawk moth wings could produce larger force than the flapper with horse botfly wings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Advanced Technology Fusion, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, South Korea

    Quoc-Viet Nguyen, Hoon C. Park & Nam S. Goo

  2. Department of Aerospace Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, South Korea

    Doyoung Byun

  3. National Research Laboratory for Biomimetics and Intelligent Microsystems, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, South Korea

    Quoc-Viet Nguyen, Hoon C. Park, Nam S. Goo & Doyoung Byun

Authors
  1. Quoc-Viet Nguyen
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  2. Hoon C. Park
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  3. Nam S. Goo
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  4. Doyoung Byun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hoon C. Park.

Additional information

Supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (Grant No. R0A-2007-000-20012-0) and Korea Research Foundation (Grant No. KRF-2006-005-J03301)

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Nguyen, QV., Park, H.C., Goo, N.S. et al. Aerodynamic force generation of an insect-inspired flapper actuated by a compressed unimorph actuator. Chin. Sci. Bull. 54, 2871–2879 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-009-0324-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-009-0324-y

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