Design, fabrication and testing of eagle wing configuration for ornithopter

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.

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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.

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

• CATIA
• Analysis
• Testing

Design, fabrication and testing of eagle wing configuration for ornithopter