Passive aeroelastic tailoring for optimal flapping wings

I N AN effort to overcome many of the Reynolds number limitations associated with micro air vehicles (MAVs) much attention has turned to the investigation of flapping flight. Biologists have studied bird and insect flight empirically for quite some time. A good review of this material can be found in Refs. 1, 2, and 3 while some interesting recent work can be found in Refs. 4, 5, and 6. One thing that is clear is that all of these creatures use two specific mechanisms to overcome the small-scale aerodynamic limitations: flexible wings and flapping wings. Birds and insects exploit the coupling between flexible wings and aerodynamic