IMAV Mechanical Flapping Bird Youth Outreach Program
The IMAV ASU-based Micro-Air Vehicles Club has completed our 4th semiannual 8-week program. Our university engineering student mentors work with 9th - 12graders who have limited experience in engineering. Each week students work with mentors to study and apply engineering principles from our club to their innovative projects. Our intense weekly sessions cover materials at an accelerated pace. The program starts at 9 AM and ends at 1 PM. We have a snack break at noon and discussion at the end of the day to summarize what we learned. The engineers / volunteers share their experiences as to how the students can achieve their successful outcomes.
● Session 1: Build with bird kit / Design with 3D-printer and 3D-pen / Test the Mechanical Flapping Bird for Experimental Velocity Data
● Session 2: Use Excel for graphical analysis to plot the trajectory of the birds by using the x-position, y-position and average velocity of the mechanical flapping bird
https://sites.google.com/a/asu.edu/michael-thompson/outreach-mavs/matlab-trajectory-code
● Session 3: Design a bird using CREO for Computer Aided Design (CAD) design
● Session 4: 3D-print the bird and nametag and LabVIEW analysis of Mechanical Flapping Audio signal
● Session 5: Use ANSYS FLUENT for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis on airplane to gather acoustic data (air -pref = 1e-12-Watt vs underwater - pref = 1e-19 Watt (speed of sound calculations)), the drag force, lift force, thrust force, gravity force (aerodynamic forces)
● Session 6: FEA on airplane to gather sound pressure level
● Session 7: Rough draft of Poster Presentation of Completed Work on: “Modeling, Analysis, and Design of a Mechanical Flapping Wing Bird Micro Air Vehicle (MAV)”
● Session 8: Q/A and Final Poster Presentation of Completed Work on: “Modeling, Analysis, and Design of a Mechanical Flapping Wing Bird Micro Air Vehicle (MAV)”
By the end of the eight weeks, the young students are able to present their group's findings on the Modeling, Analysis and Design of Mechanical Flapping Birds and are able to understand the roles of various types of engineers to ultimately decide if they would like to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).