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Applied Sciences
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Bioinspired Flight
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Bioinspired Flight

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Applied Biosciences and Bioengineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2021) | Viewed by 12711

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Hoon Cheol Park

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Smart Vehicle Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea
Interests: bioinspired robotic mechanisms; bioinspired flight; aerospace engineering
Prof. Dr. Guido de Croon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
MAV Lab, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: flapping-wing MAV; flight control; autonous flight

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Flying birds and insects have inspired extensive research into the mechanisms and principles of natural flight in the form of robotic replicas. In last two decades, there have been many reports of advances in mimicking bird and insect flight. These reports cover wide research areas, such as aerodynamics, structure, and control. Recently, challenging reports on insect-like tailless flapping-wing robots and multi-modal bioinspired robots have especially caught our attention. Such progress was difficult to imagine twenty years ago; therefore, further future developments in bioinspired flight are anticipated. A well-timed Special Issue of Applied Sciences, titled “Bioinspired Flight”, aims to collect articles on the most recent original research outcomes related to bioinspired flight and introduce them to readers in relevant research areas. Topics of the Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the theoretical and experimental aerodynamics of flapping wings, the design and flight test of robotic systems mimicking natural flight, and the control and navigation of flapping-wing robots.

Prof. Dr. Hoon Cheol Park
Prof. Dr. Guido de Croon
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • bird flight
  • insect flight
  • multi-modal bioinspired robot
  • flapping-wing robot
  • aerodynamics
  • control
  • navigation
  • swarm

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 6457 KiB  
Article
Check-Valve Design in Enhancing Aerodynamic Performance of Flapping Wings
by Lung-Jieh Yang, Reshmi Waikhom, Wei-Chen Wang, Vivek Jabaraj Joseph, Balasubramanian Esakki, Neethish Kumar Unnam, Xiu-Han Li and Chi-Yuan Lee
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(8), 3416; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11083416 - 10 Apr 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3732
Abstract
A flapping wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV) demands high lift and thrust generation for a desired payload. In view of this, the present work focuses on a novel way of enhancing the lift characteristics through integrating check-valves in the flapping wing membrane. Modal [...] Read more.
A flapping wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV) demands high lift and thrust generation for a desired payload. In view of this, the present work focuses on a novel way of enhancing the lift characteristics through integrating check-valves in the flapping wing membrane. Modal analysis and static analysis are performed to determine the natural frequency and deformation of the check-valve. Based on the inference, the check-valve opens and closes during the upstroke flapping and downstroke flapping, respectively. Wind tunnel experiments were conducted by considering the two cases of wing design, i.e., with and without a check-valve for various driving voltages, wind speeds and different inclined angles. A 20 cm-wingspan polyethylene terephthalate (PET) membrane wing with two check-valves, composed of central disc-cap with radius of 7.43 mm, supported by three S-beams, actuated by Evans mechanism to have 90° stroke angle, is considered for the 10 gf (gram force) FWMAV study. The aerodynamic performances, such as lift and net thrust for these two cases, are evaluated. The experimental result demonstrates that an average lift of 17 gf is generated for the case where check-valves are attached on the wing membrane to operate at 3.7 V input voltage, 30° inclined angle and 1.5 m/s wind speed. It is inferred that sufficient aerodynamic benefit with 68% of higher lift is attained for the wing membrane incorporated with check-valve. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioinspired Flight)
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15 pages, 5403 KiB  
Article
Leading-Edge Vortex Characteristics of Low-Aspect-Ratio Sweptback Plates at Low Reynolds Number
by Jong-Seob Han and Christian Breitsamter
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(6), 2450; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11062450 - 10 Mar 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1892
Abstract
A sweptback angle can directly regulate a leading-edge vortex on various aerodynamic devices as well as on the wings of biological flyers, but the effect of a sweptback angle has not yet been sufficiently investigated. Here, we thoroughly investigated the effect of the [...] Read more.
A sweptback angle can directly regulate a leading-edge vortex on various aerodynamic devices as well as on the wings of biological flyers, but the effect of a sweptback angle has not yet been sufficiently investigated. Here, we thoroughly investigated the effect of the sweptback angle on aerodynamic characteristics of low-aspect-ratio flat plates at a Reynolds number of 2.85 × 104. Direct force/moment measurements and surface oil-flow visualizations were conducted in the wind-tunnel B at the Technical University of Munich. It was found that while the maximum lift at an aspect ratio of 2.03 remains unchanged, two other aspect ratios of 3.13 and 4.50 show a gradual increment in the maximum lift with an increasing sweptback angle. The largest leading-edge vortex contribution was found at the aspect ratio of 3.13, resulting in a superior lift production at a sufficient sweptback angle. This is similar to that of a revolving/flapping wing, where an aspect ratio around three shows a superior lift production. In the oil-flow patterns, it was observed that while the leading-edge vortices at aspect ratios of 2.03 and 3.13 fully covered the surfaces, the vortex at an aspect ratio of 4.50 only covered up the surface approximately three times the chord, similar to that of a revolving/flapping wing. Based on the pattern at the aspect ratio of 4.50, a critical length of the leading-edge vortex of a sweptback plate was measured as ~3.1 times the chord. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioinspired Flight)
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16 pages, 6810 KiB  
Article
Effect of Wing Corrugation on the Aerodynamic Efficiency of Two-Dimensional Flapping Wings
by Thanh Tien Dao, Thi Kim Loan Au, Soo Hyung Park and Hoon Cheol Park
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(20), 7375; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app10207375 - 21 Oct 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2971
Abstract
Many previous studies have shown that wing corrugation of an insect wing is only structurally beneficial in enhancing the wing’s bending stiffness and does not much help to improve the aerodynamic performance of flapping wings. This study uses two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) [...] Read more.
Many previous studies have shown that wing corrugation of an insect wing is only structurally beneficial in enhancing the wing’s bending stiffness and does not much help to improve the aerodynamic performance of flapping wings. This study uses two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in aiming to identify a proper wing corrugation that can enhance the aerodynamic performance of the KUBeetle, an insect-like flapping-wing micro air vehicle (MAV), which operates at a Reynolds number of less than 13,000. For this purpose, various two-dimensional corrugated wings were numerically investigated. The two-dimensional flapping wing motion was extracted from the measured three-dimensional wing kinematics of the KUBeetle at spanwise locations of r = (0.375 and 0.75)R. The CFD analysis showed that at both spanwise locations, the corrugations placed over the entire wing were not beneficial for improving aerodynamic efficiency. However, for the two-dimensional flapping wing at the spanwise location of r = 0.375R, where the wing experiences relatively high angles of attack, three specially designed wings with leading-edge corrugation showed higher aerodynamic performance than that of the non-corrugated smooth wing. The improvement is closely related to the flow patterns formed around the wings. Therefore, the proposed leading-edge corrugation is suggested for the inboard wing of the KUBeetle to enhance aerodynamic performance. The corrugation in the inboard wing may also be structurally beneficial. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioinspired Flight)
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Review

Jump to: Research

30 pages, 2168 KiB  
Review
Review on System Identification and Mathematical Modeling of Flapping Wing Micro-Aerial Vehicles
by Qudrat Khan and Rini Akmeliawati
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(4), 1546; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11041546 - 08 Feb 2021
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3362
Abstract
This paper presents a thorough review on the system identification techniques applied to flapping wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs). The main advantage of this work is to provide a solid background and domain knowledge of system identification for further investigations in the field [...] Read more.
This paper presents a thorough review on the system identification techniques applied to flapping wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs). The main advantage of this work is to provide a solid background and domain knowledge of system identification for further investigations in the field of FWMAVs. In the system identification context, the flapping wing systems are first categorized into tailed and tailless MAVs. The most recent developments related to such systems are reported. The system identification techniques used for FWMAVs can be classified into time-response based identification, frequency-response based identification, and the computational fluid-dynamics based computation. In the system identification scenario, least mean square estimation is used for a beetle mimicking system recognition. In the end, this review work is concluded and some recommendations for the researchers working in this area are presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bioinspired Flight)
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