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Reduced order modeling and simulation of a bio-inspired gust mitigating flapping wing UAV

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Abstract

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) due to their operation in cluttered environments and small size have various associated problems. In depth study of birds has revealed that besides using primary and secondary feathers, birds also utilize covert feathers deflection to mitigate turbulence. This paper presents biologically inspired Gust mitigation system (GMS) for a flapping wing UAV (FUAV) inspired from covert feathers of birds. GMS consists of electromechanical (EM) covert feathers that sense the incoming gust and mitigate it through deflection of these feathers. A multibody model of a complete FUAV having GMS installed in it is developed appending models of the subsystems using Bond graph modeling approach. Further, reduced order modeling (ROM) of the GMS is presented for reducing the computational complexity and performing the stability analysis. FUAV without GMS and FUAV with proposed GMS integrated in it are simulated in presence of vertical gust and results comparison proves the efficacy of proposed design. In addition, agreement of current results with experimental results validates the accuracy of proposed design and developed model.

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Abbreviations

GMS:

Gust mitigation system

BGM:

Bond graph model

FUAV:

Flapping wing UAV

GAS:

Gust alleviation system

PZT:

Piezoelectric transducer

EM :

Electromechanical

UAV:

Unmanned aerial vehicle

SJA :

Synthetic jet actuators

UAS:

Unmanned aircraft system

CFD:

Computational fluid dynamics

Sf :

Source of flow

Se :

Source of effort

MSf:

Modulated source of flow

MSe:

Modulated source of effort

TF :

Transformer

GY :

Gyrator

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Abbasi, S.H., Mahmood, A., Khaliq, A. et al. Reduced order modeling and simulation of a bio-inspired gust mitigating flapping wing UAV. Int J Intell Robot Appl 6, 587–601 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41315-022-00247-x

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