Design and analysis of the link mechanism in the flapping wing MAV using flexible multi-body dynamic analysis

Recently, there occur rise and growth of the research on the flapping wing vehicles by mimicking the biological motion. Its result is the Flapping Micro Aerial Vehicle (FWMAV). In this paper, design requirements for FWMAV were established by using an analytical tool and unsteady blade element theory (UBET). Based on the present FWMAV design requirements, flapping wing mechanism using a six-bar linkage were devised. Moreover, the present mechanisms were analyzed by using the flexible multi-body dynamic analysis to ensure its structural robustness. By completing such procedure, behavior of the present mechanism was estimated. Then, detail design was conducted. Currently, structural analysis regarding the present mechanism was conducted under the flapping operation in vacuum. And the resulting von-Misses stresses in the linkage were designed to be smaller than the yield stresses of the chosen material. After that, detail design and experiment of the present FWMAV were conducted for validating the performance, such as aerodynamic force, flapping speed, and flapping angle. The external aerodynamic loads will be further estimated by employing an efficient aerodynamic analysis based on vortex lattice method.