: A multidisciplinary program involving collaboration between eight researchers at three universities to address fundamental aspects of flapping wing micro aerial vehicles (MAV) is described. The overall goal of the program was to develop the fundamental scientific foundation necessary to enable the design of agile, autonomous flapping-wing MAVs for operation in an urban environment. Significant accomplishments include: a) Developed and validated high- and low-fidelity computational tools for analysis and design of flapping wing MAVs; b) Developed and used measurement techniques to determine the relation between wing kinematics, geometry, and anisotropic structural flexibility; c) Conducted coordinated experimental and computational modeling to determine the roles of aerodynamic loading, wing inertia, and structural flexibility and elasticity; and d) Developed surrogate tools for flapping wing MAV design and optimization. Detailed research accomplishments have been documented in 83 archival publications, 11 Ph.D. Dissertations and 5 Master Thesis. Several archival publications are in collaboration with colleagues at AFRL.

The effects of turbulence on Micro Air Vehicles are investigated through the combination of a fast turbulence synthesis method and a low order unsteady aerodynamic model. The turbulence synthesis method leverages a digital finite impulse response filter to allow for the generation of turbulence fields from 1-D to 3-D with easily definable statistics. An implementation of the unsteady vortex lattice method is combined with the synthesized turbulence to generate long time histories of the instantaneous effects of turbulence on airfoil loading. Spectral analysis was used on several runs to evaluate bandwidths of relevance and important behaviors. Turbulence with length scales smaller than the airfoil chord was shown to have little effect on airfoil load. Vertical force and pitching moment were both highly correlated to the vertical component of velocity while neither showed correlation to incoming turbulent velocity. The vertical force was most affected by turbulence of length scales much larger than the chord while the moment was primarily affected by turbulence with length scales on the order of chord length. These results indicate aircraft reactions to turbulence and motivate the development of a dynamic sensor for determination of turbulent vertical velocity.

The University of Florida Research and Engineering Education Facility (REEF) Un-steady Fluid Dynamics Group recently designed and installed a Supersonic Wind Tunnel.The purpose of the facility is to provide supersonic °ow conditions for performing researchon active and passive control techniques of cavity °ows. Research will be conducted usingsurface pressure measurements, Schlieren and planar optical °ow measurement techniquessuch as Particle Image Velocimetry. The initial nozzle was constructed for M=1.4 °ow pro-viding approximately 200s of run time at a stagnation pressure of 137.9kPa. Several staticand stagnation pressure measurements have been recorded including streamwise and span-wise pressure gradients along with bottom and side wall boundary layer proflles. Imagingof the compressible °ow fleld was accomplished using a classical Z-Schlieren arrangementproviding qualitative information of the re°ected Mach waves.