Numerical Simulation and Optimization of Flapping Wings
with Mingjun Wei, Ph.D.
Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
New Mexico State University
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
11 a.m.
Engineering Research Center (ERC) 490
View seminar flier
abstract: The study of flexible flapping wings of natural flyers and micro air vehicles remains challenging by the problem’s unsteadiness, nonlinearity, moving boundary and strong fluid-structure interaction. In the first part of the talk, a fully-coupled method will be introduced to solve flapping-wing aerodynamics. In the second part, an adjoint-based approach is applied for the optimization and control of the shape and moving trajectory of flapping wings. Using the idea from non-cylindrical shape (or tube) analysis, we are able to derive an adjoint-based analysis in a rigorous and simple manner for the optimization of moving/morphing objects. At the end, model reduction and other related work will be briefly discussed.
biosketch: Mingjun Wei is an associate professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at New Mexico State University. Wei received his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004. Before he joined NMSU in 2006, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University for two years. His current research interests include computational fluid dynamics, flow control and optimization, model reduction, fluid-structure interaction and computational aeroacoustics.
