LABORATORY EQUIPMENT FOR A FULL-SCALE SIMULATION OF FLAPPING FLIGHT AIRCRAFTS
The article deals with problems arising in the study and full-scale simulation of ornithopters to obtain experimental data, necessary to design of flapping flight aircrafts (both membrane and hard flapping wings). Peculiarities of generating the lift and thrust forces in ornithopters, unlike in glider type and rotarty aircrafts, leads to impossibility of using the existing solutions in this field. A formal statement of the problem was given, as well as a description of all the basic requirements for such complexes. The solution of this problem was implemented on a specially designed laboratory bench, having a form of long rails, along which the research object is moving, and sets of sensors to detect physical parameters, such as transition, thrust and lift forces, frequency of wing flaps, engine speed, etc. The developed model of the ornithopter should be installed on a special carriage, the movement of which is recorded by the software-hardware complex. Due to wings flaps, which are generating the aerodynamic forces, the carriage with an ornithopter moves along those rails. All data is transferring to the computer by using data logger via USB (or SD memory card), and processing in MATLAB application. This laboratory equipment will not only carry out simulations of specially developed ornithopter, but also gather parameters of existing flapping aircrafts, developed by various labs and amateurs. The introduced version of such laboratory equipment is distinguished by its design simplicity and cheapness in comprarison with other options considered below in the paper. Opting out the optical way of the movement registration made it possible to simplify considerably and achieve the systematization of the simulation of the ornithopters of various sizes and configurations. As a result, represented are a variant of such equipment, solving this problem, and the research object, namely the test version of ornithopter with membranous wings, made by using 3D FDM printing technology.