COMPARISON STUDY OF FLAPPING WING POWER BETWEEN COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS AND WIND TUNNEL EXPERIMENT

• Main Author: Duatmaja, Rizki
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/42777
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

High demand on high functionality and efficiency of micro aerial vehicle forced many researchers to copy from the nature to seek for perfection. Many researcher have spent much time on studying the behavior of flying animals like bird, insect, and bat to comprehend the fundamental of flight. One of the most important parameter in micro aerial vehicle is energy. The total energy and the efficiency of micro aerial vehicle determine its functionality. Hence, to design micro aerial vehicle with high efficiency become a very important target for so many researcher. This study conducts simulation of flapping wing using computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel testing. Then, the results obtained are compared to understand better the differences and the similarities between the two methods. Better comprehension between these two methods can make the design process of a flapping wing a lot easier and faster without the needs to conduct experimental process. The results of this study shows that the power obtained from computational fluid dynamics simulation has same pattern compared to the power obtained from wind tunnel testing which has half wave sinusoid. The simulation result also has similar tendency when exposed to different freestream speed, the faster the freestream speed the lower the power. In addition, simulation results also has some different result compared to wind tunnel testing. The result of the simulation has lower power value compared to wind tunnel result. This is due to the fact that the simulation can not capture the effect of motor and gear mechanism efficiency and the inertial effect.