BAM Lab Summer Progress

This summer, members of the BAM Lab have been hard at work on their respective projects. The lab is excited to share the tremendous progress made across many projects. 

Michael Lynch, a  graduate student researcher in the BAM Lab, has been designing an  experiment to examine the effect of wingtip slots seen on many species  of birds. He has created a physical model wing for wind tunnel testing  to examine various parameters such as wingtip spacing and wingtip angle  of attack at various wind speeds. Michael hopes to better understand the  reason why birds have these wingtip structures and eventually wishes to  implement adaptive wingtip structures on unmanned aerial vehicles.

Graduate Student  Boris Mandadzhiev has been hard at work trying to understand the effects  of an alula feather on bird wings. He has spent this summer conducting  experiments on a 2D wing setup as well as designing a fully 3D setup.  Boris hopes to conduct hotwire and PIV measurements on his model so as  to better understand the effect of the alula feather on the flow over a  bird’s wing, and eventually, wishes to create a deployable alula device  for the ornithopter.

Graduate students  Josiah Waite and Chengfang Duan have spent their summer creating a low  fidelity, aeroelastic model to better understand the effect of covert  feathers seen on bird species. They have worked in conjunction with the  Wright Patterson Airforce Base in developing this model. The pair hopes  to eventually validate their model with wind tunnel experiments, and  then implement the devices on an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Luis  Urrutia, an undergraduate student in the BAM Lab, has spent this summer  working on many different projects for the BAM Lab. He has worked on  setting up and calibrating an open source 3D printer, implementing a  wing rotation device (as shown in the picture) for wind tunnel testing,  and helped conducted experiments in the wind tunnel.

Undergraduate  student Brian Chien has spent the summer working design improvements for  a crawling robot, a project in conjunction with the Kinetic Materials Research Group.  He has implemented many design improvements that have increased the  crawling efficiency of the robot significantly. Brian hopes to  eventually create a multi-gait robot capable of operating in unique and  adverse conditions.

Undergraduate  student Ben Smet has spent the summer implementing a sensor and data  logging package for the ornithopter. His goal is to create baseline  measurements of the power requirements and operational forces associated  with the ornithopter at various conditions. In the future, the goal  will be to see how improvements such as adaptive wingtips, flexible wing  spars, deployable coverts, and other devices affect the ornithopter.