Publications related to Aerodynamic force

Method for wind harvesting and wind rejection in flying drones

Dario Floreano, Charalampos Vourtsis, Victor Casas Rochel, Nathan Samuel Müller, William John Stewart

The present invention concerns a method of manoeuvring a vertical take-off and landing, unmanned aerial drone (100) comprising at least an aerodynamic surface (101), wherein, during a flight of the drone, the aerodynamic surface generates lift and/or drag ...

2024

Data from: Optimal blade pitch control for enhanced vertical-axis wind turbine performance

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest

This directory contains open-source data obtained using a single-bladed H-type vertical-axis wind turbine prototype with individual blade pitching. This data results from the optimisation of the blade's pitching kinematics using a genetic algorithm at two ...

Zenodo2024

Lumped Drag Model Identification and Real-Time External Force Detection for Rotary-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

Alcherio Martinoli, Lucas Cédric Wälti

This work focuses on understanding and identifying the drag forces applied to a rotary-wing Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV). We propose a lumped drag model that concisely describes the aerodynamical forces the MAV is subject to, with a minimal set of parameters ...

IEEE2024

Power performance of a model floating wind turbine subjected to cyclic pitch motion: A wind tunnel study

Fernando Porté Agel, Guiyue Duan, Daniele Gattari

Wind tunnel experiments were performed with a miniature floating wind turbine model to study the effects of cyclic pitch motion on its power performance. The cyclic pitch motion was prescribed by two key parameters: pitch frequency and amplitude. The power ...

IOPscience2024

Earwig-inspired foldable origami wing for micro air vehicle gliding

Jamie Paik, Risa Ishiguro

Foldable wings serve as an effective solution for reducing the size of micro air vehicles (MAVs) during non-flight phases, without compromising the gliding capacity provided by the wing area. Among insects, earwigs exhibit the highest folding ratio in thei ...

Frontiers Media Sa2023

Wing and tail morphing in birds and drones

Enrico Ajanic

To aid humans in civilian tasks, future drones will have to operate in large cities that abound with difficult flight conditions such as confined spaces, obstacles, and turbulent air. Such drones must cruise efficiently to cover vast distances fast and als ...

EPFL2023

The effects of kinematics, flexibility, and planform on the vortex formation and aerodynamic performance of flapping wing flight

Alexander Gehrke

In this thesis, the aerodynamic challenges in flapping wing flight are addressed. In particular, the effects of different wing kinematics, flexibilities, and planforms on the the leading edge vortex development and aerodynamic performance are investigated. ...

EPFL2023

Dynamic stall characterisation and control for vertical-axis wind turbines

Sébastien Le Fouest

According to the International Energy Agency, the global net-zero emissions objective requires the installed wind power capacity to increase 11-fold between 2020 and 2050. The scientific community has recently voiced concerns about the logistic feasibility ...

EPFL2023

Sharp turning maneuvers with avian-inspired wing and tail morphing

Dario Floreano, Valentin Wüest, Enrico Ajanic, Mir Alikhan Bin Mohammad Feroskhan

Flight in dense environments, such as forests and cities requires drones to perform sharp turns. Although fixed-wing drones are aerodynamically and energetically more efficient than multicopters, they require a comparatively larger area to turn and thus ar ...

2022

From coating flow patterns to porous body wake dynamics via multiscale models

Pier Giuseppe Ledda

Multiscale phenomena are involved in countless problems in fluid mechanics. Coating flows are known to exhibit a broad variety of patterns, such as wine tears in a glass and dripping of fresh paint applied on a wall. Coating flows are typically modeled und ...

EPFL2022

Design of an intake and a thruster for an atmosphere-breathing electric propulsion system

Francesco Romano, Thomas Binderup Jensen

Challenging space missions include those at very low altitudes, where the atmosphere is the source of aerodynamic drag on the spacecraft, that finally defines the mission's lifetime, unless a way to compensate for it is provided. This environment is named ...

2022

Active microrheology in corrugated channels: Comparison of thermal and colloidal baths

Ignacio Pagonabarraga Mora

Hypothesis: The dynamics of colloidal suspension confined within porous materials strongly differs from that in the bulk. In particular, within porous materials, the presence of boundaries with complex shapes entangles the longitudinal and transverse degre ...

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE2022

Calibration of Fixed-Wing UAV Aerodynamic Coefficients with Photogrammetry for VDM-based Navigation

Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré

Autonomous navigation is a crucial aspect for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle operation when encountering disturbance or denial of GNSS signal reception. Vehicle dynamic model-based navigation improves the performance of methods based exclusively on int ...

2021

Phenomenology and scaling of optimal flapping wing kinematics

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke

Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping wing flight are dominated by large-scale vortical structures tha ...

IOP PUBLISHING LTD2021

Accurate buoyancy and drag force models to predict particle segregation in vibrofluidized beds

Mehrdad Kiani Oshtorjani

The segregation of large intruders in an agitated granular system is of high practical relevance, yet the accurate modeling of the segregation (lift) force is challenging as a general formulation of a granular equivalent of a buoyancy force remains elusive ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

Re-entry analysis of critical components and materials for design-for-demise techniques

Pénélope Leyland, Stefano Mischler, Seong-Hyeon Park

The concern caused by the rising population of space debris has increased. One of the recommended mitigation measures is the safe re-entry disposal either in a controlled or uncontrolled manner. Performing a controlled re-entry, where the spacecraft is gui ...

2021

Dynamic stall on an airfoil undergoing VAWT blade angle of attack variations

Karen Ann J Mulleners, Sébastien Le Fouest, Sabrina Henne

Vertical axis wind turbines have several attractive features in the context of energy production in urban areas, but the inherent aerodynamic complexity of the flow around them has challenged their development on a larger scale. They generally operate at l ...

2020

Device for measuring a force exerted on an object

Simon Nessim Henein, Charles Baur, Mohammad Hussein Kahrobaiyan, Mohamed Gamal Abdelrahman Ahmed Zanaty

The present invention relates to a device for measuring a contact force exerted by an object on a probe comprising a lever and said probe for contacting the object. The lever is pivotably coupled to a body by coupling means. The device comprising a fixed f ...

2020

Dynamics of optical forces and torques in plasmonic systems: a surface integral equation

Olivier Martin, Karim Achouri, Andrei Kiselev

A novel approach is introduced to determine the time evolution of optical forces and torques on arbitrary shape nanostructures by combining Maxwell's stress tensor with the surface integral equation method (SIE). Conventional time averaging of Maxwell’s st ...

SPIEDigitalLibrary2020

Delicate yet strong: characterizing the electro-adhesion lifting force with a soft gripper

Herbert Shea, Jun Shintake, Vito Cacucciolo

Compliant grippers are one of the most promising soft robotic devices for industrial tasks. Soft grippers dramatically simplify grasping control because the gripper automatically conforms to the object's shape. A common limitation of soft structures is tha ...

IEEE2019