Flapping wing air vehicles offer many useful flight characteristics due to their versatility, as proven by flying animals. Wing design significantly influences the performance. However designing successful wings presents significant challenges. Efficient matching of the drive motors to the flapping wings is necessary to overcome the highly constrained weight budget. Simulating detailed information about the force response due to flapping is challenging due to complex fluid-structural interactions of the wings resulting in non-linear force response to flapping motion. To overcome this challenge, we conducted an experimental study of flapping wings to provide detailed temporal force response data for flapping wings. A prototype was built by synthesizing lightweight manufacturing techniques with the results of the experimental study. Our experimental investigations enabled us to select the flapping angle range and flapping frequency.

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