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Much of research conducted to date assumes that insect wings are perfectly rigid and flat surfaces, whose motions, translation and rotation, are prescribed. This paper introduces the flexibility onto insect wings via the variation of stiffness and elemental mass. By static analysis, the characteristic deformation was revealed in two major directions: spanwise and chordwise. Further tuning the material distribution, a more realistic deformation was obtained which shows biased flexibility toward chordwise direction. The following dynamic analysis offered information about actual inertial loading which is mostly spanwise bending. The wing model is refined to produced more chordwise flexibility without affecting the bending resistance along the span. Finally a set of comprehensive computations on the realistic model with both inertial and fluid load were carried out. This paper presents an insight into the flexibility effects by quantification analysis of aerodynamic forces and power expenditure produced by flexible flapping wings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of recent developments in Flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicles (FMAV) in Asia in past few years. The paper discusses recent Asian research in the development of FMAV and summarizes two major strands of research divided by insect-like FMAVs and bird-like FMAVs. Also the paper summarizes the developing status of FMAV and proposes the future research focus, development trends and application prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study which investigated mechanism of three-dimensional flapping propulsion for a fishlike underwater vehicle by developing calculation method of flow field around two- and three-dimensional wing with flapping and pitching motion. OpenFoam computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software was deployed to investigate the possibility to simulate flow field around a three-dimensional (3-D) flapping wing. The method developed can investigate the flow field around 3D flapping wing.

A vortex model of a flapping aerofoil with LE detached vortex sheet is presented. A system of equations, one integral that imposes the boundary condition and other describing the motion of the wakes and vorticity conservation are written. To these one must add the Kutta-like condition and the initial conditions for the wakes. A numerical solution was given that consists of a modified Glauert method in connection with vortex range wake models with finite cores. Mathcad worksheets were written to obtain numerical values and diagrams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]