Aerodynamic Analysis of Manta Ray-Inspired Micro-air Vehicle Wing Planforms
This study examines the performance of a bio-inspired micro-air vehicle’s wing planforms at a low Reynolds number. The shape of the manta ray’s wing was extracted from the real image of a manta ray and a B-spline curve was generated. The Zimmerman planfor
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Abstract This study examines the performance of a bio-inspired micro-air vehicle’s wing planforms at a low Reynolds number. The shape of the manta ray’s wing was extracted from the real image of a manta ray and a B-spline curve was generated. The Zimmerman planform was taken as the base for the model. Using Bezier curve, the planform was extended on the sides to create two models with differing curvatures which were named Manta A and Manta B. Numerical simulations were conducted using ANSYS FLUENT 15.0 at a Reynolds number of 1×105 , and the aerodynamic characteristics of the planforms were studied. It was clear from the results that the manta ray-inspired planforms provided better lift characteristics at all angles of attack between 0° and 20° when compared to the base Zimmerman planform. It can also be observed that both the manta planforms provide better C L /C D ratios by around 11–23% between angles of attack 10° and 20°. Keywords Manta ray · Micro-aerial vehicle · Bio-inspired wing planform · Aerodynamic efficiency
1 Introduction A lot of interest has been shown in design and development of micro-air vehicles lately. MAVs are the class of unmanned aerial vehicles which are miniature in size, generally less than 500 mm [1], and are widely used for surveillance and reconnaissance purposes. MAVs may be autonomous or semi-autonomous in nature and need to be extremely versatile in their performance. MAVs have been classified into fixed wing, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), flapping wing and rotary wing types [2]. And of the four types, fixed wing has the longest endurance, range and highest D. Subramanian · J. A. Revanth · G. A. Vasagan · P. S. Ramnarendran · R. S. K. Thangeswaran (B) · B. Ramakrishnananda Department of Aerospace Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 N. Gascoin and E. Balasubramanian (eds.), Innovative Design, Analysis and Development Practices in Aerospace and Automotive Engineering, Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6619-6_33
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altitudes and flight speeds and is usually hand-launched. The design of MAVs is difficult due to a lack of exhaustive understanding of the aerodynamics pertaining to small vehicles. Also, due to the low endurance, which is often of the order of few minutes, design modifications are required in order to achieve high aerodynamic efficiencies. Mueller et al. [2] had conducted a thorough study on the lift, drag and pitching moment characteristics of low aspect ratio wings in low Reynolds number flows. They focused on the effects of aspect ratio and wing planform on moments and forces in low Reynolds number flows and they provide the experimental data of lift, drag and moment for Zimmerman planforms of various aspect ratios. Moreover, the Zimmerman planform is one among many MAV planforms which was p
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