Development of Bio-mimetic composite wing structures and experimental study on flapping characteristics

It has been over two years since we successfully develop our own design of flapping micro air vehicle with its dimension of 50cm. But more specified and detailed development to adopt the flight mechanism of natural flyers was required during downsizing its dimension. So this has driven us to the further research on efficient flight system especially on its wing structure. This paper explains our development of Bio-mimetic wing and experimental studies on flapping characteristics. By analysing each phase of flapping cycle, flapping characteristics of insect wing and mechanical wing could be compared. We focused our research to find out bio-mimetic wing of its performance : how exactly does it affect to the flapping efficiency. We also have reduced our flapping micro air vehicle´s weight from 45grams to less than 10grams and its size from 50cm to 15 cm. Although it hasn´t been sufficient to fly in the field with the wind velocity over 2m/s, it still gives us the possibilities of mechanical flapping vehicle developed to be as small as insect. In order to become an autonomous ornithopter with capability of receiving data, such as vision, sound and temperature, we have taken every step that needed to have a high efficient flight mechanism as nature´s.