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The flapping wings of insects undergo large deformations caused by aerodynamic forces, resulting in cambering. Insect-mimetic micro wings for flapping-wing nano air vehicles mimic these characteristic deformations. In this study, a 2.5-dimensional insect-mimetic micro wing model for flapping-wing nano air vehicles is proposed to realize this type of wing. The proposed model includes a wing membrane, a leading edge, a center vein, and a root vein, all of which are modeled as shell elements. The proposed wing is a 2.5-dimensional structure and can thus be fabricated using polymer micromachining. We conducted a design window search to demonstrate the capabilities of the wing. The design windows, which are areas of desirable design solutions in the design parameter space, are iteratively searched using nonlinear finite-element analysis under quasi-steady aerodynamic modeling. Here, thickness is selected as a design parameter. The properties of real insects, polymer materials, and fabrication conditions are used to determine the other parameters. A fabricable design solution that generates sufficient camber is found from the design windows.

In this study, we propose an algorithm selection method based on coupling strength for the partitioned analysis of structure-piezoelectric-circuit coupling, which includes two types of coupling or inverse and direct piezoelectric coupling and direct piezoelectric and circuit coupling. In the proposed method, implicit and explicit formulations are used for strong and weak coupling, respectively. Three feasible partitioned algorithms are generated, namely (1) a strongly coupled algorithm that uses a fully implicit formulation for both types of coupling, (2) a weakly coupled algorithm that uses a fully explicit formulation for both types of coupling, and (3) a partially strongly coupled and partially weakly coupled algorithm that uses an implicit formulation and an explicit formulation for the two types of coupling, respectively. Numerical examples using a piezoelectric energy harvester, which is a typical structure-piezoelectric-circuit coupling problem, demonstrate that the proposed method selects the most cost-effective algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]