Research Projects

The micro-air-vehicle (MAV) or Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has found application in various areas of modern-day reconnaissance and border surveillance missions, acquisition of images for geological survey, monitoring of disasters, searching and rescuing, atmospheric monitoring, line-inspection of structures in smart cities, agricultural pest control, terrestrial and aquatic wildlife surveying, etc. to name a few. The critical design component of MAV requires a thorough understanding of the complex flow physics owing to the insect-like pitching flight. Contemporary works employing single pitching plate shows drag-to-thrust transition for specific ranges of pitching frequency and the maximum pitching angle. Higher thrust is very much desirable for the long and durable flight of the MAVs with less energy input. Although, the common single pitching-based wing design of MAVs lacks adequate thrust performance and, therefore, minimum flight velocity, maximum time of flight, and autonomy. Therefore, employing double pitching plates about their respective leading edge could improve the thrust performance of such MAVs where the complex interactions between the trailing edge vortices enhance the overall thrust produced by the plate. At the same time, changing phase differences during pitching motion may also trigger thrust performance and propulsion efficiency. Hence, a proper understanding of such phenomena is of utmost importance for the design and synthesis of the advanced energy high-performance micro-air-vehicle. However, experimental and numerical studies have yet to be undertaken to date which address the above situation on the double pitching plate motion on the thrust generation. It is still unknown if the proximity of two pitching plates triggers or greatly reduces the thrust performance of MAVs. Much of this limitation can be attributed to the complexities associated with experimentations/numerical simulations. From the viewpoint of numerical simulation, it is very much challenging as it requires enormous computational effort to capture flow physics involving transient 3D fluid-structure interactions. In this regard, we propose a validated higher-order accurate numerical approach that considers the above effects to address the essential physics of two pitching plates in a uniform flow. Moreover, the optimum choice of the pitching frequency delineated in dimensionless form as the Strouhal number and the maximum pitching angle would trigger the effective thrust performances produced by the plates. That, in turn, would help in reducing the energy input for the forced pitching motion during the flight. Upon completing this project, we will address key design parameters with a higher potential for probing into the advanced energy-efficient wings for the MAVs.