Hello World,
We would like to introduce our ME514-project, which we will continuously report about here. We have decided to build a rubber band powered ornithopter. An ornithopter is a flying device which uses beating wings to fly, resembling the locomotion of birds, bats, and insects.
The origin of heavier-than-air flight started with attempting to mimic this flapping technique used by animals. The first recorded account of these ideas was written by Leonardo da Vinci in 1509, who wrote down his observations in the book “Codex on the flight of birds”.
Figure 1: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight)
Nowadays 3D-printing allows us to easily manufacture an ornithopther, while giving us a lot of design freedom. There are several designs available for rubber band ornithopters on Thinginverse. One of them is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:239789)
Goals:
- Build an ornithopter based on Thinginverse designs
- Optimize the design for flying
- Optimize the design for the material extrusion process
– print time
– minimal support structure
– amount of material - Initially use a rubber band for power
- Implement a motor into later iterations
- Incorporate a bat shape into the design (possibly Batman)
Requirements to meet goals:
- Glide ratio > 1
- Capable of withstanding 5 landing impacts without evidence of failure
- Stay in the air for at least 5 seconds