The ability to collect valuable data concerning the stress, strains, and shape profiles of aircraft and aircraft components during flight is important to fields such as structural health monitoring, gust alleviation, and flutter control. A research interest in the form of a NASA Phase I SBIR called for possible systems that would be able to take accurate shape sensing data on a flexible wing aircraft. In a joint venture between Luna Technologies Inc. and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University a flexible wing wind tunnel model was designed and constructed as a test article for the Luna Technologies Inc. fiber optic shape sensing system. In order to prove the capability of a fiber optic shape sensing system in a wind tunnel environment a flexible wing test article was constructed. The wing deflections and twists of the test article were modeled using a vortex lattice method called Tornado combined with simple beam theories. The beam theories were linear beam theories and the stiffness of the composite bodies was supplied by static testing of the test articles. The code was iterative in that it ran the VLM code to estimate the forces and moments on the wing and these were applied to a linear beam which gave the wing a new geometry which in turn was run through the VLM. The wind tunnel model was constructed at Virginia Tech using 3-D printing techniques for the fuselage and foam and fiberglass for the wings. On the bottom surface of the wings the Luna Technologies Inc. fiber optic shape sensing fiber was bonded along the leading and tailing edges. The swept-wing test article was experimentally tested in the Virginia Tech 6'x6' Stability Wind Tunnel at various airspeeds and the VLM based code results were in agreement, within margins of error and uncertainty, with the experimental results. The agreement of the analytical and experimental results verified the viability of using an iterative VLM code in combination with simple beam theories as a quick and relatively accurate approximation method for preliminary design and testing. The tests also showed that a fiber optic shape sensing system can be sufficiently tested in a wind tunnel environment, and if applied carefully could perhaps in the future provide useful shape and strain measurements. / Master of Science

Small scale unmanned aircraft, such as quadrotors, that are quickly emerging as versatile tools for a wide range of applications including search and rescue, hazardous environment exploration, or just shooting great video, are known as micro air vehicles (MAVs). However, for millimeter scale vehicles with weights under 10 grams, conventional flight technologies become greatly inefficient and instead inspiration is drawn from biology. Flapping wing MAVs (FWMAVs) have been created based on insects and hummingbirds in an effort to emulate their extreme agility and ability to hover in place. FWMAVs possess unique capabilities in terms of maneuverability, small size, and ability to operate in dynamic environments that make them particularly well suited for environmental monitoring and swarm applications such as artificial crop pollination. Despite their advantages, significant challenges in fabrication, power, and control must be overcome in order to make FWMAVs a reliable platform. Current designs suffer from high mechanical complexity and often rely on off-board power, sensing, and control, which compromises their autonomy and limits practical applications. The goal of my research is to develop a simple FWMAV design that provides high efficiency and controllability. An efficient, simple, and controllable vehicle design is developed utilizing the principles of resonance, emulation of biological flight control, and under-actuation. A highly efficient, resonant actuator is achieved by attaching a spring in parallel to the output shaft of a commercial geared DC micro-motor. This actuator directly drives the wings of the vehicle, allowing them to be controlled precisely and independently. This direct control strategy emulates biology and differs from other FWMAV designs that utilize complicated transmissions to generate flapping from rotary motor output. Direct control of the wings allows for emulation of biological wing kinematics, resulting in control based on wing motion alone. Furthermore, under-actuation is employed to mimic the rotational motion of insect wings. A rotational joint is added between the motor and wing membrane such that the wing rotates passively in response to aerodynamic forces that are generated as the wing is driven. This design is realized in several stages, initial prototyping, simulation and development of the actuator and wings, then finally a control system is developed. First the system was modeled and improved experimentally in order to achieve lift off. Improvements to the actuator were realized through component variation and custom fabrication increasing torque and power density by 161.1% and 666.8% respectively compared to the gearmotor alone and increased the resonant operating frequency of the vehicle from 4 Hz to 23 Hz. Advances in wing fabrication allowed for flexible wings that increased translational lift production by 35.3%, aerodynamic efficiency by 41.3%, and the effective lift coefficient by 63.7% with dynamic twisting. A robust control architecture was then developed iteratively based on a date driven system model in order to increase flight time from 1 second (10 wing strokes) to over 10 seconds (230 wing strokes). The resulting design improves lift to weight by 166%, allowing for a payload capacity of approximately 8.7 g and offers the potential for fully autonomous operation with all necessary components included on-board. A thermal model for micro-motors was developed and tuned to accurately predict an upper limit of system operation of 41 seconds as well as to optimize a heatsink that increases operating time by 102.4%.

Développer, à partir de zéro, un drone imitant le vol battu de l'insecte est une tâche ambitieuse et ardue pour un designer en raison du manque de savoir-faire en la matière. Pour en accélérer le développement pendant les phases de design préliminaires, un outil modélisant les phénomènes aéroélastiques du vol de l'insecte est un véritable atout pour le designer et est le sujet de cette thèse. Le cœur de cet outil est un solveur éléments finis 'structure' couplé, en utilisant une approche par tranche, à un modèle aérodynamique quasi-statique du vol de l'insecte prenant en compte la flexibilité de l'aile, à la fois selon l'envergure et la corde, mais aussi ses grands déplacements. L'ensemble est conçu de manière à contenir le coût de calcul tout en étant assez modulaire pour s'adapter à un large panel d'applications. Afin de valider l'intégralité de cet outil, un processus en deux étapes a été entrepris avec d'abord une approche numérique et ensuite une validation expérimentale grâce à un banc de caractérisation dédié. Les résultats du modèle concordent de manière satisfaisante dans les deux cas, capturant l'amortissement dû aux forces aérodynamiques, et ouvrent ainsi la voie à son utilisation pour le design de drones à ailes battantes. Pour démontrer l'intérêt de cette approche lors des phases de design préliminaires, deux applications sur un nano-drone résonant sont réalisées: la définition d'une stratégie d'actionnement efficace et la recherche d'une géométrie d'aile potentiellement intéressante d'un point de vue aérodynamique, en couplant l'outil de modélisation à un algorithme génétique. Les résultats obtenus sont cohérents avec ceux trouvés dans la nature et sont en cours d'implémentation sur le drone. / Developing insect-like flapping-wing drones from scratch is an ambitious and arduous task for designers due to a lack of well-established know-how. To speed up the development of such vehicles through the preliminary design stage, a framework modeling the aeroelastic phenomena encountered in insect flight is an asset and is the subject of this thesis. Its kernel is a FEM based structural solver coupled in a blade-element approach to a quasi-steady aerodynamic model of insect flight accounting for the wing flexibility, both in the spanwise and in the chordwise direction, and for its large displacement. The complete framework is devised so as to maintain the computation load low while being modular enough for a wide range of applications. To validate the overall aeroelastic framework, a two-steps process has been undertaken with in one hand numerical studies and in the other hand experimental ones acquired on a dedicated test bench. The framework computation agrees satisfactorily, capturing the damping due to the aerodynamic force, and thus paves the way for preliminary design applications of a flapping-wing vehicle. To exhibit the capabilities of the framework as a preliminary design tool, two applications on a resonant nano air vehicle are performed: the definition of an efficient actuation strategy and the search of an aerodynamic potentially interesting wing geometry by plugging the framework to a genetic algorithm. The results are coherent with the ones found in nature and are under implementation on the nano air vehicle.

Submitted by Lucienne Costa (lucienneferreira@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-04-30T18:14:28Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ORLANDO TOMAZ DA SILVA NETO – DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGEM) 2016.pdf: 7124483 bytes, checksum: b1fb3855e470f87f0e7d5c3081fcf9f1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-30T18:14:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ORLANDO TOMAZ DA SILVA NETO – DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGEM) 2016.pdf: 7124483 bytes, checksum: b1fb3855e470f87f0e7d5c3081fcf9f1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-16 / A busca por aumento no desempenho das aeronaves tem direcionado, entre outras coisas, ao aumento da razão de aspecto da asa e ao uso de materiais avançados; essas soluções tem levado ao aumento de flexibilidade, resultando em problemas aeroelásticos ‒ aeroelasticidade é a ciência que estuda os fenômenos provenientes das interações entre forças aerodinâmicas, elásticas e inerciais ‒. Nessa área, destaca-se o flutter, fenômenos aeroelásticos de estabilidade dinâmica. Dentro deste contexto, este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar o comportamento em flutter de uma asa flexível com alta razão de aspecto com atuadores passivos de Ligas com Memória de Forma (LMF) submetida a um escoamento subsônico. Para isso fez-se o projeto, construção e testes de um modelo aeroelástico para ser ensaiado em túnel de vento, o desenvolvimento desse protótipo contou com uma abordagem numérico-experimental; finalizados os testes do modelo, fez-se a seleção e caracterização termomecânica do atuador; por fim, realizou-se os teste no túnel de vento. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que para determinadas disposições dos atuadores na asa o comportamento aeroelástico sofreu um ganho de desempenho bastante significativo como, aumento na velocidade crítica de ocorrência de flutter de aproximadamente 28%, entretanto, para outro arranjo observou-se uma diminuição de 15% na velocidade crítica. Com a análise dos resultados foi possível concluir que deve ser realizado um estudo minucioso do comportamento dinâmico do sistema sob efeito dos atuadores; além disso do efeito de cada arranjo deles na estrutura, para que assim o efeito desejado seja alcançado. / The search for increase in the performance of the aircraft has directed, among other things, to the increase of the aspect ratio of the wing and to the use of advanced materials; These solutions led to an increase of flexibility, resulting in aeroelastic problems - aeroelasticity is the science that studies the phenomena arising from the interactions between aerodynamic, elastic and inertial forces. In this area, we highlight the flutter, dynamic stability aeroelastic phenomenon. In this context, this work aims to analyze the behavior of a flexible wing with high aspect ratio with passive actuators of Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) in flutter, submitted to a subsonic flow. For this, the design, construction and testing of an aeroelastic model was carried out to be tested in a wind tunnel, the development of this prototype counted on a numerical-experimental approach; After finished model tests, the thermomechanical selection and characterization of the actuator was done; Finally, the tests were carried out in the wind tunnel. The results showed that, for certain arrangements of the actuators in the wing, the aeroelastic behavior underwent a very significant performance gain as, an increase of approximately 28% in the critical rate of flutter occurrence. With the results analysis, it was possible to conclude that a detailed study of the dynamic behavior of the actuators and of the effect of each arrangement of them on the structure must be carried out so that the desired effect may be achieved.

This thesis deals with determination of effect of wing flexibility on load distribution. FSI analysis using modal superposition was used for determination of effect of wing flexibility. Analysis was verified by analytic calculation. Differences of load distribution, between rigid and flexible wing, was determined for the selected flight regimes. Change of the bending moment was up to 3,9 %. Thesis shows importance of including effect of wing flexibility for sailplane design.

Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) have recently gained attention due to their increased ability to perform sophisticated missions with less cost and/or risk than their manned counterparts. This thesis develops approaches to the use of compliant mechanisms in the design of deployable wings for small UAVs. Although deployable wings with rigid-link mechanisms have been used in the past to maintain flight endurance while minimizing required storage volume, compliant mechanisms offer many advantages in manufacturability and potential space savings due to function sharing of components. A number of compliant, deployable wing concepts are generated and a classification system for them is formed. The pool of generated concepts serves as a basis for stimulating future concept ideas. A methodology is also proposed for evaluating concepts for a given application. The approach to developing compliant designs for certain applications is illustrated through two example designs, which demonstrate key portions of the proposed design process. Each is modeled and analyzed to demonstrate viability.