A miniature chemical actuator with a compliant expansion chamber, passive exhaust valve and electrowetting-based fuel injection

A miniature chemical actuator with a compliant expansion chamber, passive exhaust valve and electrowetting-based fuel injection

Mous, Guido (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering)

Goosen, J.F.L. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Mechanical Engineering

2020-11-16

In recent years, an increasing amount of research projects contributed to the development of flapping-wing-micro-aerial-vehicles (FWMAV) that can fly and perform hovering flight in confined spaces. However, scaling laws have a negative influence on the aerodynamic efficiency and actuator efficiency. Consequently, FWMAVs suffer from very limited flight endurance. To solve this problem, present study develops a chemical actuator with high power-to-weight ratio using a compliant expansion chamber, passive exhaust valve and electrowetting-based fuel delivery. The periodically varying tension force of the bellow expansion chamber is exploited to open an exhaust valve, leading to an exhaust valve that requires no external control or power. The compliant expansion chamber with passive exhaust valve is designed, built and successfully validated in a measurement setup. The actuator is designed to use the catalyst reaction of hydrogen peroxide as source of pressurization. The validated model shows that the developed actuator is expected to be a promising contender to increase the flight endurance of FWMAV. Moreover, it would be a suitable actuator for other small-scale energy generation applications where a high power-to-weight ratio is key.

FWMAV
chemical actuator
electrowetting

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a8ba1b39-0beb-4cfe-868e-fdf1bf58c20f

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 Guido Mous