中華民國風工程學會電子報

THE INITIATIVE OF LIFT FORCE MEASUREMENT OF AN ORNITHOPTER FORMATION

本文摘要According to Lissaman and Shollenberger’s article published in Science in 1970, birds fly in formation to reduce the overall energy expenditure for flight. Thus this work adopted the same principle of flight formation to ornithopters to save energy. Two experiments are described herein. Firstly, a rigid frame housing three ornithopters was made and a tethered flight of it around a fixed suspension point was performed to evaluate the cruise performance of the ornithopter formation and check for energy saving by monitoring the endurance against a known reference value. In the second experiment, a jig housing three ornithopters was subject to a wind tunnel test at the Wind Engineering Center of Tamkang University. The aerodynamic force evaluation of the formation was done. From the preliminary examination, it is found that at 3 m/s, 10° angle of attack was the best case to generate largest lift and thrust. When compared to the real birds flying in a formation, the energy saving of ornithopters may be further improved by replicating the dynamic adjustments of frequency, phase change and separation among neighboring ornithopters, to obtain best energy-saving results in the future.

THE INITIATIVE OF LIFT FORCE MEASUREMENT OF AN ORNITHOPTER FORMATION

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