Phase II Final Report - NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts

Planetary Exploration Using Biomimetics
An Entomopter for Flight on Mars
in the Mars atmosphere must be determined through a parametric analysis that more fully
explores the entire design space over which the Entomopter can function.
Empirical results can be generated on a newly constructed flapping wing simulator in the GTRI
wind tunnels. This hardware simulator, developed on another government-funded project, is
capable of operating with a full scale blown winglet of the exact planform used by the Mars
Entomopter and at speeds comparable to those used in the CFD simulations. These wind tunnel
tests are beyond the scope of work originally proposed under this NIAC Phase II effort, but will
be conducted as follow-on work to advance and refine the CFD and analytical models developed
here.
3.3.1.6 Forces on the Entomopter Wing
Time histories of forces on the Entomopter wing for Case 1 (without blowing) are shown next.
Figure 3-100: Force (Newtons) Time History for Simulation Without Blowing
The unsteady simulations started from time step 1. One flap cycle consisted of 80 time steps.
Periodic behavior in time is reached almost from the first cycle, but several cycles were carried
out to confirm this behavior. Each iteration represents a time step.
The x-force is along the free stream (along the horizontal from front to back of the wing), and
the y-force is the vertical force.
The z-force is the force in the direction of the span. This is not worth a great deal of attention
because in a symmetric wing configuration, this force will be opposed by a similar force acting
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Phase II Final Report