Approximate aeroelastic modeling of flapping wings: Comparison with CFD and experimental data

Results generated from an aeroelastic model obtained by coupling a nonlinear structural dynamic model based on MARC with an approximate aerodynamic model that incorporates leading edge vortices and a wake model are presented. The aerodynamic model, used in our earlier studies, is extended to forward flight. Results presented describe structural dynamic and aeroelastic studies conducted on isotropic and anisotropic wings in hover. For the cases considered, the approximate model shows reasonable agreement with the CFD based results. Comparisons with experiment indicate that the approximate model captures trends accurately, but under predicts the magnitude of thrust. Preliminary results obtained for a rigid flapping wing in forward flight indicate that, for the cases considered, peak lift generated by the wing increases as forward flight speed increases. Copyright © 2010 by P. Friedmann, A. Gogulapati, E. Kheng, and W. Shyy