Effects of airfoil on aerodynamic performance of flapping wing

Flapping-wing aircraft(FWA)operates in a flight mode that mimics natural flyers,such as birds,bats and insects.For large scale bird-inspired flapping wings aircraft,the design of airfoil parameters is crucial to improving the aerodynamic performance.In order to study the effect of camber on the aerodynamic characteristics,we developed four different airfoils with a chord length of 12 cm.The cambers of airfoils are respectively 30 mm,25 mm,20 mm and 15 mm.A numerical investigation into the effects of camber on aerodynamic performance is carried out through COMSOL Multiphysics software using Fluid–Structure Interaction(FSI)module.In this work,the fluid–structure module employs the Navier–Stokes equations coupled with a solid stress–strain physics module and a moving mesh module.The three-dimensional(3D)flapping wing computational models with different cambers are built.The results show that certain camber of airfoil can improve the aerodynamic characteristics of flapping wing.