Design, fabrication and testing of eagle wing configuration for ornithopter

Published on 28 May 2021. Written by Gurudutt

An ornithopter is a type of aircraft that flies by flapping its wings. Designers try to mimic the flight of birds, bats, and insects.

In this project, we are going to design and develop a scaled 3D model of ornithopter resembling an eagle. Then, kinematic data is obtained from the 3D model of ornithopter and fabricated to the required dimensions.

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Project description:

• Battery: 2cell battery with 7.4V voltage, 900mAh capacity, 51g weight.
• Motor: Brushless motor provides very high torque with low rpm. This is useful in carrying a high quantity of payload. Brushless DC motor with 1800 KV, 180W maximum power, 900g maximum thrust is used.
• Electronic Speed Controller: It controls and regulates the speed of the motor. It can handle 12A of current that is considered to be an upper bound of power required.
• Servo motor: In this ornithopter metal gear servo motor is used which produces torque up to 1.80 kg/cm and weighs 9g.
• Transmitter and Receiver: 4GHZ TX and RX with a minimum of 5 channels are used.

Flapping mechanism:

Single slider crank mechanism: It is a 4-bar chain. It consists of a sliding pair and turning pair. This type of mechanism is used for converting rotary motion into reciprocating motion and vice versa. In this, the connector 1, connectors 2 and 3, and connectors 3 and 4 forms three turning pairs while the connectors 4 and 1 form sliding pair. The connector 1 meets the engine frame which is fixed. The connector 2 meets the crank, connector 3 corresponds to the connecting rod and connector 4 corresponds to the crosshead. As the rotation of crank starts, the crosshead starts to reciprocate.

Methodology:

• Configuration of an eagle: An eagle of optimum dimension is selected as a reference for building the UAV.
• Design of ornithopter: Wingspan, weight, length, length of the tail and wing area is taken from the eagle. Ornithopter is then designed as per the specifications.
• Modeling of ornithopter: The software generates a CAD model using CATIA (Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application). This 3D model is considered as a prototype and the ornithopter is designed.
• Fabrication of ornithopter: For the construction of the mainframe, material selection is important. The weight of the material and its strength is a very important factor for this project. It is liable to use acrylic to obtain a lightweight structure.

Future works:

• In the future, aerodynamic analysis is carried out to find the natural frequency of ornithopter structure, lift coefficient (CL), drag coefficient (CD) and to compute the aerodynamic load of the wing.

Kit required to develop Design, fabrication and testing of eagle wing configuration for ornithopter:

• Styrofoam
• Battery
• DC motor
• Servo motor
• ANSYS
• CATIA

Technologies you will learn by working on Design, fabrication and testing of eagle wing configuration for ornithopter:

• CATIA
• Analysis
• Testing

Any Questions?