16. Equipment for Determining Aerodynamic Forces on Flapping Wings

This chapter is devoted to the experimental determination of the non-steady aerodynamic forces acting on the flapping wings of the micro air vehicles (MAVs). The first attempts to explain the lift generation on the insects’ wings used the so-called “steady-state” aerodynamics, a theory that had been successfully applied in aircraft design. The result was a failure, leading to the conclusion that “a fly cannot fly”! Later, both experimental and theoretical investigations proved that flapping flight uses specific aerodynamic mechanisms being able to increase the lift. At the National Institute for Aerospace Research (INCAS), Bucharest, Romania, a multidisciplinary group of scientists performed such research on flapping wings, their detailed measurement procedure being presented here.