Effect of Gap between Primary Feathers on Bending Moment of a Bird-like Assembled Wing

Abstract

Wing of bird is composed of lots of feathers and thus shows conspicuous difference from the wing of conventional airplane. In this study, the function of primary feather of bird wing is focused on and the wind tunnel test was conducted by using models of assembled wing with several primary feathers. The result shows that the existence of gap between primary feathers reduced the lift and lift-to-drag ratio. It also reduced the bending moment made by the primary feathers at the tip of the wing, thus indicating the benefit of assembled wing to augment the tolerance of wing to the destruction due to the strong bending moment under turbulent condition.