Influence of Aerodynamic Parameters on Dragonfly Inspired Corrugated Aerofoil

Abstract

This work is focused on the variation of corrugation angle and peak height of 2-D corrugated aerofoil inspired from the forewing of ‘Pantala Flavescens’ or yellow dragonfly basal wing section. A computational analysis is done on a newly designed dragonfly corrugated aerofoil wing-A and wing-B at Re = 15.603 × 10³ and the flow is considered as steady and density of the flow is constant. In this study, the aerodynamic performance of 2-D dragonfly corrugated aerofoil is performed at different angle of attack (AoA) with variation in corrugation angle and peak height. With the varying peak height and corrugation angle, there is low wake formation, reduced drag, and increase in flight performance compared to streamlined aerofoil and flat plate. The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis is performed using a high fidelity fluent solver. The CFD result shows that the aerodynamic performance, i.e., the gliding ratio $\left( {\frac{{C_{L} }}{{C_{D} }}} \right)$ of wing-A is higher than wing-B and streamlined aerofoil. The vortex formed is trapped inside the valleys which re-energizes the flow and delays separation leads to an increment in lift coefficient (C_L). This finding enhances the knowledge of insect-inspired corrugated wing structure and facilitate the application for improved design of artificial wings for MAVs and UAVs.