Experimental Investigation of Micro-Aerial Vehicle Wing Designs

Abstract

The use of micro aerial vehicles (MAV) has become a rapidly growing class of aerial vehicle for habit, commercial industrial and many other applications. However, micro aerial vehicle design is a challenge because of the lack of understanding about the aerodynamics of miniaturized aircraft at low speeds. This paper presents a novel tandem-morphing wing system for MAV design. The bio-inspired design is tested with various angles of attack for low chord Reynolds number regimes around $2\times 10^{4}$. 16 different morphing-wing configurations are tested for lift-to-drag ratio optimization. This systematic experiments link the influence of the airfoil configurations of tandem-wings to the performance of its aerodynamic characteristics.