Modeling, Simulation and Implementation of a Bird-Inspired Morphing Wing Aircraft

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bird-inspired morphing wing aircraft with a novel design, validated through modeling, simulation, and flight tests, demonstrating its ability to perform multiple flight modes.

Contribution

It presents a new morphing wing design inspired by birds, including aerodynamic modeling, CFD validation, and prototype flight experiments.

Findings

Validated aerodynamic model through CFD simulations.

Successfully demonstrated three flight modes in prototype tests.

Optimized linkage parameters for different flight states.

Abstract

We present a design of a bird-inspired morphing wing aircraft, including bionic research, modeling, simulation and flight experiments. Inspired by birds and activated by a planar linkage, our proposed aircraft has three key states: gliding, descending and high-maneuverability. We build the aerodynamic model of the aircraft and analyze its mechanisms to find out a group of optimized parameters. Furthermore, we validate our design by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation based on Lattice-Boltzmann technology and determine three phases of the planar linkage for the three states. Lastly, we manufacture a prototype and conduct flight experiments to test the performance of the aircraft.