Bioinspired Control Effectors for Airborne Wind Energy Harvesting

Wind energy harvesting has become increasingly important over the past decade as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, playing a crucial role in mitigating climate change. Airborne wind energy harvesting (AWEH) platforms complements current traditional on-shore and off-shore wind turbines. This talk presents recent progress on feather-inspired flaps as novel flight control effectors for tailless AWEH kites. Tailless kites pose significant aerodynamic control challenges due to the lack of conventional control surfaces. Inspired by bird covert feathers, this work explores the deployment of covert-inspired flaps on both the suction and pressure sides of a wing section to enhance aerodynamic control authority without a tail section. Wind tunnel force/torque measurements, particle image velocimetry experiments, and data-driven modeling are used to investigate the fundamental aerodynamic mechanisms of covert-inspired flaps under static and dynamic conditions. Results show that the covert-inspired flaps are effective flight control devices during both static, steady-state flight conditions and dynamic pitch maneuvers. Wind tunnel experimental results are then validated during free flight experiments on the Toyota Research Institute of North America (TRINA) Gen 8 AWEH kite. During flight tests, the covert-inspired flaps enabled the kite to successfully perform stability augmentation maneuvers necessary to maintain flight, as well as pumping cycle maneuvers required for energy harvesting, establishing novel bioinspired lightweight, effective, and multifunctional control effectors for tailless AWEH kites and making new pathways toward efficient high-altitude wind power generation.