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Ornithopters are bird‐like flapping‐wing robots. Only small ornithopters can hover, with long endurance at hummingbird size. Could larger ornithopters be improved further to hover longer? This paper reviews and examines the drive and power of hovering ornithopters, and elastic means of energy or thrust boosters. While the rotation of flexible wings enhance the thrust generation, two‐winged ornithopters did not scale up well because of higher disk loading. In comparison, the X‐winged or multiple‐V‐winged ornithopters enjoy a lower disk loading by beating multiple wings slower, at a smaller stroke angle or a longer span. Further, the clap‐and‐fling interaction of V and X‐wings boosts the thrust generation. Future works can explore the wing flexibility and morphology change to improve the hoverability and flight agility of ornithopters. Only small ornithopters can hover, longest at the hummingbird size. This article reviews the drive and power of these hovering machines, focusing on elastic energy and thrust boosters. Unlike two‐winged designs, X‐winged and multiple‐V‐winged ornithopters benefit from lower disk loading and slower, smaller wingbeats, and the clap‐and‐fling effect.

A flight device for insect-inspired flapping wing nano air vehicles (FWNAVs), which consists of the micro wings, the actuator, and the transmission, can use the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) to create the characteristic motions of the flapping wings. This design will be essential for further miniaturization of FWNAVs, since it will reduce the mechanical and electrical complexities of the flight device. Computational approaches will be necessary for this biomimetic concept because of the complexity of the FSI. Hence, in this study, a computational approach for the FSI design of insect-inspired micro flapping wings is proposed. This approach consists of a direct numerical modeling of the strongly coupled FSI, the dynamic similarity framework, and the design window (DW) search. The present numerical examples demonstrated that the dynamic similarity framework works well to make different two FSI systems with the strong coupling dynamically similar to each other, and this framework works as the guideline for the systematic investigation of the effect of characteristic parameters on the FSI system. Finally, an insect-inspired micro flapping wing with the 2.5-dimensional structure was designed using the proposed approach such that it can create the lift sufficient to support the weight of small insects. The existing area of satisfactory design solutions or the DW increases the fabricability of this wing using micromachining techniques based on the photolithography in the micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Hence, the proposed approach will contribute to the further miniaturization of FWNAVs.

This paper describes the design and development of the Dove, a flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV), which was developed in Northwestern Polytechnical University. FWMAVs have attracted international attentions since the past two decades. Since some achievements have been obtained, such as the capability of supporting an air vehicle to fly, our research goal was to design an FWMAV that has the ability to accomplish a task. Main investigations were presented in this paper, including the flexible wing design, the flapping mechanism design, and the on-board avionics development. The current Dove has a mass of 220 g, a wingspan of 50 cm, and the ability of operating fully autonomously, flying lasts half an hour, and transmitting live stabilized color video to a ground station over 4 km away.

This study focuses on the flapping mechanisms found in recently developed biometric flapping-wing air vehicles (FWAVs). FWAVs mimic the flight characteristics of flying animals, providing advantages such as maneuverability, inconspicuousness, and excellent flight efficiency in the low Reynolds number region. The flapping mechanism is a critical part of determining the aerodynamic performance of an FWAV since it is directly related to the wing motion. In this study, the flight characteristics of birds and bats are introduced, the incorporation of these flight characteristics into the development of FWAVs is elucidated, and the utilization of these flight characteristics in the development of FWAVs is explained. Next, the classification and analysis of flapping mechanisms are conducted based on wing motion and the strategy for improving aerodynamic performance. Lastly, the current research gap is elucidated, and potential future directions for further research are proposed. This review can serve as a guide during the early development stage of FWAVs.

Many species of fish and birds travel in groups, yet the role of fluid-mediated interactions in schools and flocks is not fully understood. Previous fluid-dynamical models of these collective behaviors assume that all individuals flap identically, whereas animal groups involve variations across members as well as active modifications of wing or fin motions. To study the roles of flapping kinematics and flow interactions, we design a minimal robotic “school” of two hydrofoils swimming in tandem. The flapping kinematics of each foil are independently prescribed and systematically varied, while the forward swimming motions are free and result from the fluid forces. Surprisingly, a pair of uncoordinated foils with dissimilar kinematics can swim together cohesively—without separating or colliding—due to the interaction of the follower with the wake left by the leader. For equal flapping frequencies, the follower experiences stable positions in the leader’s wake, with locations that can be controlled by flapping amplitude and phase. Further, a follower with lower flapping speed can defy expectation and keep up with the leader, whereas a faster-flapping follower can be buffered from collision and oscillate in the leader’s wake. We formulate a reduced-order model which produces remarkable agreement with all experimentally observed modes by relating the follower’s thrust to its flapping speed relative to the wake flow. These results show how flapping kinematics can be used to control locomotion within wakes, and that flow interactions provide a mechanism which promotes group cohesion.

Modes and manifestations of the explosive activity in the Earth’s magnetotail, as well as its onset mechanisms and key pre-onset conditions are reviewed. Two mechanisms for the generation of the pre-onset current sheet are discussed, namely magnetic flux addition to the tail lobes, or other high-latitude perturbations, and magnetic flux evacuation from the near-Earth tail associated with dayside reconnection. Reconnection onset may require stretching and thinning of the sheet down to electron scales. It may also start in thicker sheets in regions with a tailward gradient of the equatorial magnetic field B z ; in this case it begins as an ideal-MHD instability followed by the generation of bursty bulk flows and dipolarization fronts. Indeed, remote sensing and global MHD modeling show the formation of tail regions with increased B z , prone to magnetic reconnection, ballooning/interchange and flapping instabilities. While interchange instability may also develop in such thicker sheets, it may grow more slowly compared to tearing and cause secondary reconnection locally in the dawn-dusk direction. Post-onset transients include bursty flows and dipolarization fronts, micro-instabilities of lower-hybrid-drift and whistler waves, as well as damped global flux tube oscillations in the near-Earth region. They convert the stretched tail magnetic field energy into bulk plasma acceleration and collisionless heating, excitation of a broad spectrum of plasma waves, and collisional dissipation in the ionosphere. Collisionless heating involves ion reflection from fronts, Fermi, betatron as well as other, non-adiabatic, mechanisms. Ionospheric manifestations of some of these magnetotail phenomena are discussed. Explosive plasma phenomena observed in the laboratory, the solar corona and solar wind are also discussed.

Modern designs of micro air vehicles (MAVs) are mostly inspired by nature's flyers, such as hummingbirds and flying insects, which results in the birth of bio‐inspired MAVs. The history and recent progress of the aerodynamic mechanisms in bio‐inspired MAVs are reviewed in this study, especially focused on those compound layouts using bio‐inspired unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms. Several successful bio‐mimicking MAVs and the unsteady high lift mechanisms in insect flight are briefly revisited. Four types of the compound layouts, i.e. the fixed/flapping‐wing MAV, the flapping rotary wing MAV, the multiple‐pair flapping‐wing MAV, and the cycloidal rotor MAV are introduced in terms of recent findings on their aerodynamic mechanisms. In the end, future interests in the field of MAVs are suggested. The authors' review can provide solid background knowledge for both future studies on the aerodynamic mechanisms in bio‐inspired MAVs and the practical design of a bio‐inspired MAV.

This paper is based on a previously developed bio-inspired Flapping Wing Aerial Vehicle (FWAV), RoboFalcon, which can fly with a morphing-coupled flapping pattern. In this paper, a simple flapping stroke control system based on Hall effect sensors is designed and applied, which is capable of assigning different up- and down-stroke speeds for the RoboFalcon platform to achieve an adjustable downstroke ratio. The aerodynamic and power characteristics of the morphing-coupled flapping pattern and the conventional flapping pattern with varying downstroke ratios are measured through a wind tunnel experiment, and the corresponding aerodynamic models are developed and analyzed by the nonlinear least squares method. The relatively low power consumption of the slow-downstroke mode of this vehicle is verified through outdoor flight tests. The results of wind tunnel experiments and flight tests indicate that increased downstroke duration can improve aerodynamic and power performance for the RoboFalcon platform.

Design optimization has been increasingly investigated for an airfoil, aiming to reduce the vorticity in the wake and increase the aerodynamic performance. In the current work, a two-dimensional (2D) S833 airfoil equipped with a flapping fringe at the trailing edge has been studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The objective is to investigate the influence of the length (Lf) and flapping frequency (f) of the fringe on shedding vortices from the airfoil and the drag and lift coefficients. The validation of the current numerical approach for both static and dynamic motions of the airfoil was conducted. First, four different computational meshes were created for the static bare airfoil S833 model, and the simulated drag and lift coefficients were compared against experimental results. It is observed that the second finest mesh contributes to the best agreement with the measurement data. In addition, the numerical accuracy of the dynamic simulation was assessed by reproducing the pressure distribution around the airfoil NACA0014 with a periodic plunging motion at different time phases within one plunging cycle. Good agreements between the simulated and previous computational results are obtained. Moreover, the investigation of S833 airfoil equipped with a flapping fringe reveals that the model with Lf =0.01 m (10% of the chord length) associated with a flapping frequency below the shedding frequency of the bare airfoil can significantly alter the coherent structure of the shedding vortices, breaking the routine large-scale vortex into small-scale weak vortices. It also results in reducing the intensity of vortices and shortening the distance between each pair of vortices to accelerate the dissipation of vorticity. In addition, the equipped flapping trailing edge fringe can achieve extra benefit in aerodynamic performance in terms of the reduction of the drag coefficients and the enhancement of lift coefficients.

The present study investigated the effects of wing shapes and flapping motions on the aerodynamic forces and vortex structures of insect flight. Aerodynamic force measurements and flow visualizations were performed in a water tank by cross-applying the wing shapes of bumblebee, hawkmoth, and hummingbird to their hovering flapping motions. When the three different wings were measured making the same motions, the average difference of lift-to-drag ratio was 2.7%. In the aspect ratio and wing area distribution range, where three wing shapes were distributed, aerodynamic performances were similar according to wing shape. However, the average difference of lift-to-drag ratio was 34.3% when flapping motion was differed within the same wing shape. The aerodynamic performances of three flapping motions varied significantly with changes in sweeping speed and wing rotation. The difference of average in aerodynamic efficiency was 4.9% among the three wings when making the same motion, and 43.7% when the motions were differed in the same wing. The results showed that flapping motions had significant effects on aerodynamic performance. Visualization results also showed that the vortex structure changes significantly when motions are different in the same wing shapes. These findings provide valuable data for designing flapping micro air vehicles and morphing aircraft.