The wings of any flapping wing micro air vehicle is usually under cyclic motion. This cyclic excitation may cause the fatigue of the material and its failure. In this study, we model the ribs of the flapping wings micro air vehicle undergoing the lift force. A fintie element model using the commercial software ABAQUS is developed and used to determine the maximum stress and deflection in the ribs. A MMAT subroutine is devoloped to model the degradation behavior of the ribs. It is found that even if the fatigue does not cause the initiation of failure of the structure, the degradation of the material can result in an increase in the twist of the flapping wing micro air vehicle and hence can reduce its aerodynamic efficiency.
展开▼
