Abstract
An experimental study was carried out to investigate aerodynamic characteristics on reduced frequency of flapping wings. The half span of the wing is 28cm, and the mean chord length of wing is 10cm. In flight, the Reynolds Number range of birds is about $10^4$, and the reduced frequency during a level flight is 0.25. The experimental variables of present study were set to have similar conditions with the bird flight's one. The freestream velocities in a wind tunnel were 2.50, 3.75 and $5.00^m/s$, and the corresponding Reynolds numbers were $1.7{\times}10^4$, $2.5{\times}10^4$ and $3.3{\times}10^4$, respectively. The wing beat frequencies of an experimental model were 2, 3 and 4Hz, and the corresponding reduced frequency was decided between 0.1 and 0.5. Aerodynamic forces of an experimental flapping model were measured by using 2 axis load-cell. Inertial forces measured in a vacuum chamber were removed from measuring forces in the wind tunnel in order to acquire pure aerodynamic forces. Hall sensors and laser trigger were used to make sure the exact position of wings during the flapping motion. Results show that the ratio of downstroke in a wing beat cycle is increased as a wing beat frequency increases. The instantaneous lift coefficient is the maximum value at the end of downstroke of flapping wing model. It is found that a critical reduced frequency with large lift coefficient is existed near k=0.25.