Characterization of a Millimeter-Scale Flapping Wing Driven by Two Orthogonally Oriented PZT Actuators

The performance of a fruit fly scaled piezoelectric MEMS (PiezoMEMS) wing is characterized directly through observation of the wing's motion and indirectly by modeling the forces generated by the kinematics. The angular deflections, measured with cameras from multiple perspectives simultaneously, are significant, achieving 50° and 15° in the flap and pitch degrees of freedom respectively at 185 Hz. Although significant, comparison with the fruit fly suggests larger deflections are required than this particular wing exhibits and this conclusion is reinforced by the modeled aerodynamic loads. A basic coupled aerodynamic-dynamic model, utilizes some empirically determined coefficients, shows the ability to predict the wing dynamics from the applied actuator voltages. This model suggests that the wing dynamics throughout the flap stroke are dominated by the wing inertia relative to the aerodynamic loads.