This paper is concerned with measuring experimentally the stroke, generated mechanical power and efficiency of a flapping wing micro air vehicle's piezoelectric actuators when the forces transmitted to the actuator by a thorax are modeled with a nonlinear damping component. The objective is to test, simulate and model the actuators' behavior in conditions as close as possible to what would happen on a flapping wing MAV, without having to build the entire MAV which is still in its design stage. The loading applied to the actuator is created using an electromagnetic actuator to simulate a load varying with the actuator's tip displacement (hence simulating a stiffness) and with the actuator's tip velocity (hence simulating viscous damping). Measurements of velocities, forces and current absorbed are used to calculate the electric power consumed and the mechanical power generated by the actuator in steady state regime. For comparison, the experimental procedure is reproduced with a finite element code and an analytical model is derived.

Date Published: 27 April 2011
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 7977, Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems 2011, 79771S (27 April 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.877075

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7977:
Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems 2011
Mehrdad N. Ghasemi-Nejhad, Editor(s)