Experimental Study On The Mechanical And Electrical Properties Of Flexible Solar Cells For Flapping Flight Application

The researches and development of MAV(Micro Aerial Vehicle)have brought many conveniences to human life.Rely on their high flexibility,mobility and small feature size advantage,the MAV helps to fulfill plenty of tasks which human people can not complete,and also to achieve explorations and breakthroughs in the field of scientific research.In accordance with the different airfoil layout mode,MAV can be divided into three basic types: fixed wing,rotary wing and flapping wing flight.Research has confirmed that,in the range below 15 cm feature size,flapping wing aircraft,compared to the other two types,has higher flexibility and mobility.However,during the study process of flapping wing aircraft,there’s many technical problems to overcome.The mechanism itself would produce obvious flapping vibration,thus the requirements for the fuselage parts are relatively high.Up till now,we can not fully mimic the structure and morphology of birds and insects flying wings,making it impossible to achieve the insect like flapping wing flight mode which uses low Reynolds number and high frequency flapping to produce tremendous lift.As result,the body weight is also very limited.This would therefore limit the function components’ volume and weight of the FMAV(Flapping Micro Aerial Vehicle),and also the flying time and distance of the vehicle.The idea to use solar panels to provide energy supply for the FMAV is very creative.As we all know,the solar energy is clean,renewable and easy to get,which makes it suitable to provide extra energy supply in the vehicle running process.Since that the flexible thin-film solar panels have considerable flexibility,it can also fit the structure and movements of the wings of flapping wing aircraft.The purpose of this study is to explore the feasibility of flexible thin film solar panels by experimental method,and to conclude its applicability for flapping flight.According to fatigue mechanical vibration theory and resonance principle,the experimental conditions are selected to be the first-order natural frequency vibration.For the samples of flexiblethin-film solar panels,we aim to explore the mechanical performance and electrical output characteristics under the natural frequency vibration,thus the "ultimate poor working environment”.The whole research process also includes the preliminary preparation experiments,theory and modeling calculation,and the gradual improvement of the experimental process and the optimization of output results.As the research topic is relatively advanced,there is no similar experimental research published yet.The whole experimental scheme is designed and implemented independently.During the process,the special solar panel clamp was designed and a single chip was made out to realize the real-time display of the output voltage.In view of the small size and light weight of the solar panel sample,some traditional experimental methods which are not suitable was redesigned.The research proved that,the solar panel sample adopted was quite suitable for application of flapping wing flight design.