Development of an FSI Environment for the Aerodynamic Performance Assessment of Flapping Wings

Abstract

Insects and birds take advantage of their flexible wings to modulate the aerodynamic forces and increase their flight efficiency. A deep understanding of the aeroelastic benefits could be valuable to design Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAVs) that exploit nature's full potential. This work presents an open-source, high-fidelity, Fluid-Structure Interaction solver (FSI) to simulate flapping and deforming wings. The proposed approach uses the code CoCoNuT to couple the Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) software Kratos Multiphysics with the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software OpenFOAM. The coupling code relies on the Interface Quasi-Newton with Inverse Jacobian method (IQNI). The CSM evaluates the wing deformation using a classic Finite Element Method with shell elements, while the CFD solver uses the deformable overset method. In the CFD solver, the deformation of the wing is interpolated onto the grid's boundaries to accurately simulate wings with large motion and deformation. The FSI solver is tested in the case of an airfoil in heave motion and validated with experimental data. The results demonstrate the strong influence of wing deformation on its aerodynamic performance.