Flight stability study of micro air vehicle with elastic aerodynamic shape

Flight stability of air vehicles is often considered a significant research issue during aircraft structure design process. In the attempt to improve such properties, the investigation of the effects the design parameters may have on the flight stability or anti-disturbance property has become a constituent part in design and testing stage. Micro air vehicles (MAVs) are small size unmanned aircraft, in which flight attitude and stability are more sensitive to the environmental disturbance. A vertical ducted-fan hovering MAV with an elastic aerodynamic shape was presented and discussed in this paper. Based upon a three-dimensional measurement method, a stroboscopic imaging technique was proposed and the spatial information of aircraft aerodynamic shape deformation has been obtained and presented. Then the effects of structural design parameters on the flight stability was analyzed and calculated mathematically. It was found that aircrafts simultaneously having a large height and small external radius of the shell have a relatively large deformation component in the aerodynamic shape under a given disturbance force. It also means that the flight stability of an aircraft with this characteristic can be improved.