Meeting Abstract
Insects with flapping wings require agility towards ambient disturbances to maintain airborne and stabilization. Insects adopt subtle changes in wing kinematics to overcome the perturbations, and passive feathering, which indicates passive response of feathering angle toward aerodynamic and inertia torque , is highly possible to exist in insect. To investigate the stability of insect with passive feathering mechanism, bumblebee model is used with 6 degrees of freedom in rigid body assumption, and 1 degree of freedom for each separate wing in wing feathering direction. One directional perturbations are applied to body. Body attitude angles are compared in passive feathering system and active feathering (wing feathering angle remains the same as experimental values under perturbation) in several strokes. It shows that under symmetric perturbation, stability of passive system and active system behave similarly while under asymmetric perturbations, roll stability of passive system is enhanced through the different passive reaction of two wing hinges toward perturbation. Passive feathering mechanism reduces wing hinge complexity, and makes it a promising for Micro Air Vehicle design and stability.
