Related papers: State-space aerodynamic model reveals high force c…
Bristled and membranous insect wings have co-evolved despite apparently serving the same functionality. We emulate flight physics using an automated free-fall experiment to better understand how and why several distinct wing forms may have…
Many traditional methods for wind turbine design and analysis assume quasi-steady aerodynamics, but atmospheric flows are inherently unsteady and modern turbine blades are susceptible to aeroelastic deformations. This study therefore…
The aim of this work is to study the dynamics and stability of soft shape-morphing configurations and specifically the modes of interaction between the front and rear airfoil segments. Initially we present several steady-state solutions,…
We propose a multibody model of a freewing UAV. This model allows obtaining simulations of the UAV's behaviour and, in the future, to design a control law stabilising the entire flight envelope (hovering and forward flight). We also…
Active flow control (AFC) methods for jet-type flows have been extensively explored since the 1970s. Spectacular examples demonstrating the AFC power and the beauty of fluid mechanics include bifurcating and blooming jets. Recent advances…
Biologically-inspired robots are a very interesting and difficult branch of robotics dues to its very rich dynamical and morphological complexities. Among them, flying animals, such as bats, have been among the most difficult to take…
The rich structures arising from the impingement dynamics of water drops onto solid substrates at high velocities are investigated numerically. Current methodologies in the aircraft industry estimating water collection on aircraft surfaces…
Autonomous unpowered flight is a challenge for control and guidance systems: all the energy the aircraft might use during flight has to be harvested directly from the atmosphere. We investigate the design of an algorithm that optimizes the…
We develop a highly efficient numerical method to simulate small-amplitude flapping propulsion by a flexible wing in a nearly inviscid fluid. We allow the wing's elastic modulus and mass density to vary arbitrarily, with an eye towards…
Controlling the flight of flapping-wing drones requires versatile controllers that handle their time-varying, nonlinear, and underactuated dynamics from incomplete and noisy sensor data. Model-based methods struggle with accurate modeling,…
Most biological flyers undergo orderly deformation in flight, and the deformations of wings lead to complex fluid-structure interactions. In this paper, an aerodynamic-structural coupling method of flapping wing is developed based on ANSYS…
Accurate and efficient aeroelastic models are critically important for enabling the optimization and control of highly flexible aerospace structures, which are expected to become pervasive in future transportation and energy systems.…
We propose and validate a data-driven approach for modeling large-amplitude flow-induced oscillations of elastically mounted pitching wings. We first train a neural networks regression model for the nonlinear aerodynamic moment using data…
Flutter in lightweight airfoils under unsteady flows presents a critical challenge in aeroelastic stability and control. This study uncovers phase-localized mechanisms that drive the onset and suppression of flutter in a freely pitching…
This work presents an actuation framework for a bioinspired flapping drone called Aerobat. This drone, capable of producing dynamically versatile wing conformations, possesses 14 body joints and is tail-less. Therefore, in our robot, unlike…
Unsteady inviscid flow models of wings and airfoils have been developed to study the aerodynamics of natural and man-made flyers. Vortex methods have been extensively applied to reduce the dimensionality of these aerodynamic models, based…
Unsteady aerodynamic effects can have a profound impact on aerial vehicle flight performance, especially during agile maneuvers and in complex aerodynamic environments. In this paper, we present a real-time planning and control approach…
The present work is concerned with the shape optimization of flapping wings in forward flight. The analysis is performed by combining a gradient-based optimizer with the unsteady vortex lattice method (UVLM). We describe the UVLM…
A novel method to estimate unsteady aerodynamic force coefficients from pointwise velocity measurements is presented. The methodology is based on a resolvent-based reduced-order model which requires the mean flow to obtain physical flow…
Passive flow control via fluid-structure interaction (FSI) is a promising paradigm for unmanned aerial vehicles operating in vortex-dominated low Reynolds number regimes. A flexible structure has the potential to passively alter key…