Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/G008531/1
Title:	Computational Toolbox for Fluid-Membrane Interaction with Applications to Micro Air Vehicles and Insect Flight
Principal Investigator:	Cirak, Dr F
Other Investigators:	Ellington, Professor C
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department:	Engineering
Organisation:	University of Cambridge
Scheme:	First Grant Scheme
Starts:	01 March 2009	Ends:	31 August 2012	Value (£):	389,982
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Aerodynamics
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Aerospace, Defence and Marine
Related Grants:
Panel History:	Panel Date Panel Name Outcome 19 Jun 2008 Engineering Science (Flow) Panel Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
This research addresses the need for computational tools and techniques for the aeroelastic analysis of fluid-membrane systems. The particular focus is on development of a comprehensive computational toolbox for analysing the dynamics of fluids and embedded structures with the goal of obtaining high-fidelity predictions for aerodynamic design parameters, like drag and lift, and structural design parameters, like maximum stress and deflection. Although the equations for viscous, incompressible fluid flow and membrane dynamics are straightforward and well known, it is still challenging, if not impossible, to perform fluid and membrane coupled computations in the presence of large deformations. Besides fundamental differences in the mathematical structure of fluid and solid equations, progress is hampered by the vast disparity of the physical length and time scales involved. To address the first issue, the computational toolbox will include a mathematically rigorous and algorithmically robust formulation for representing the coupled dynamics of a fluid with an immersed membrane. For resolving the length and time scales a two-pronged approach will be followed. First, the developed techniques will be scalable to large system-level, three-dimensional simulations, with up to billions of unknowns, which will be achieved through systematic utilization of high-performance computing platforms. Second, the influence of the unresolvable sub-grid scales on the large-scale motions of the fluid flow will be explicitly modelled with a multi-scale method. The design of flapping wing micro air vehicles (MAVs) has been chosen as the driving application for this research. Conventional aerodynamic methods are either inapplicable or too crude for the design space exploration of bio-inspired MAVs with highly compliant flapping wings. Therefore, further MAV development requires new computational tools for the aeroelastic analysis of fluid-membrane systems. In return, the MAVs will provide an unrivalled testbed for a comprehensive experimental validation programme for the computational predictions. Flapping wing MAVs are nevertheless poor imitations of the natural millimetre and centimetre scale flyers - the insects. A combination of computations and free flight experiments will therefore be conducted towards identifying the key factors in natural flyers excellence. The highly scalable and validated computational toolbox developed during the project will be made available as open source software to the scientific community. Therefore, it is expected that the outcome of this project will be relevant far beyond the design of MAVs and the study of insect flight.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
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Project URL:	http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/csml/
Further Information:
Organisation Website:	http://www.cam.ac.uk