The Effect of Aspect Ratio on Aerodynamic Characteristics of Flapping Motion

날개의 종횡비가 날개 짓 운동의 공기역학적 특성에 미치는 영향

The lift and drag forces produced by a wing of a given cross-sectional profile are dependent on the wing planform and the angle of attack. Aspect ratio is the ratio of the wing span to the average chord. For conventional fixed wing aircrafts, high aspect ratio wings produce a higher lift to drag ratio than low ones for flight at subsonic speeds. Therefore, high aspect ratio wings are used on aircraft intended for long endurance. However, birds and insects flap their wings to fly in the air and they can change their wing motions. Their wing motions are made up of translation and rotation. Therefore, we tested flapping motions with parameters which affect rotational motion such as the angle of attack and the wing beat frequency. The half elliptic shaped wings were designed with the variation of aspect ratio from 4 to 11. The flapping device was operated in the water to reduce the wing beat frequency according to Reynolds similarity. In this study, the aerodynamic forces, the time-averaged force coefficients and the lift to drag ratio were measured at Reynolds number 15,000 to explore the aerodynamic characteristics with the variation of aspect ratio. The maximum lift coefficient was turned up at AR=8. The mean drag coefficients were almost same values at angle of attack from $10^{\circ}$ to $40^{\circ}$ regardless of aspect ratio, and the mean drag coefficients above angle of attack $50^{\circ}$ were decreased according to the increase of aspect ratio. For flapping motion the maximum mean lift to drag ratio appeared at AR=8.