Design and aerodynamic characteristic analysis of unfolding-bending bionic flapping-wing aircraft

A bionic flapping-wing aircraft model is designed in this study to achieve unfolding-bending effect of a bird's wings during flight, realize active unfolding-bending movement, and demonstrate rapid return characteristic of flapping-bending motion. We use the new method of ADAMS and XFlow cosimulation to analyze its aerodynamic characteristics and investigate effects of flutter frequency, air flow velocity, fuselage angle of attack, and aileron torsion angle on its aerodynamic characteristics. Results showed that increasing the flapping frequency can significantly improve aerodynamic characteristics, increasing the air flow velocity will reduce aerodynamic characteristics, decreasing the fuselage angle of attack will reduce peak lift and increase peak thrust, and increasing the aileron torsion angle will reduce the rising resistance and increase forward thrust. The analysis results showed the excellent aerodynamic characteristics of the model.