An Experimental Study of Flapping Frequency and Thrust Generation in a Flapping Wing Robot

Abstract

For the design of the Flapping-Wing Aerial Vehicle (FWAV), we conducted experiments to obtain the relationship between the flapping frequency of the wings and the generated thrust experimentally. We built two types of wings with the same aspect ratio and different areas. The experimental results showed that the flapping thrust increased monotonically with flapping frequency, and the increase in area was also effective. As the wing area increases, the load on the wing structure also increases, and strong wings are needed to generate thrust to support a heavy FWAV.