APCOM & ISCM 11-14 th December, 2013, Singapore 1 Computational Mechanics of a Coupled Flow-Structure Interaction Problem with Applications to Bio-inspired Micro Air Vehicles *Rohan Banerjee 1 , *Padmanabhan Seshaiyer 2 1 Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA 22312, USA 2 Mathematical Sciences, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA *Corresponding authors: rohan.b.banerjee@gmail.com, pseshaiy@gmu.edu Abstract Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) are small flying vehicles that are designed to fit certain size and weight constraints. MAVs are important because they have a variety of practical applications, including surveillance and weather imaging. MAVs fall into two major categories according to their lift mechanism, either fixed-wing or flapping-wing, and wing structure, either rigid or flexible. Much research has been devoted to fixed wing, flexible MAVs consisting of rigid stabilizing battens and a rigid central fuselage coupled with a flexible membrane. We used finite element software to implement a system of PDEs that represented the MAV wing. The goal of this study was to computationally verify qualitative results showing that varying the number of stabilizing battens and the angle of attack affected the wing deformation. The work will be extended to include rigorous stability estimates, which will provide a better understanding of flexible wing MAV aerodynamics, and nonlinear membrane models. Keywords: Micro Air Vehicles, multiphysics, mechanics, PDE, finite element method Introduction Applications in computational mechanics have expanded with the need to solve sophisticated fluid- structure applications using novel computational methodologies. Solving these coupled systems efficiently helps to understand complex non-linear interactions that arise in several applications such as blood flow interaction with arterial wall (Bathe and Kamm, 1999; Nobile, 2001) and computational aeroelasticity of flexible wing flying vehicles (Ferguson, 2006), where the structural deformation and flow field interact in a highly complex way. This study focuses specifically on the applications of computational mechanics to flexible-wing MAVs. Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) are small, autonomous flying vehicles which are designed for use in applications where human intervention would be either costly or dangerous. MAVs have the potential to be used in a large number of applications, including military reconnaissance and weather imaging. A number of variations on MAVs have been considered in computational and experimental studies. One type of MAV is the flexible-wing MAV, in which a flexible membrane is attached to a rigid body, allowing the wing to passively deform during the course of a flight. The other major type of MAV is the biologically-inspired flapping-wing MAV. A number of studies have been conducted which examine the thrust performance of flapping-wing mechanisms (La Mantia and Dabnichki, 2013). Unfortunately, constructing flapping-wing MAVs that satisfy power and stability requirements is often very difficult (Ifju et. al, 2002). Therefore, in this study, we computationally modeled the behavior of a particular variant of the flexible-wing MAV designed and tested by Ifju, et al.