Uncertainty quantification for a flapping airfoil with a stochastic velocity deviation

An outdoor flapping wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV) should be able to withstand unpredictable perturbations in the flight condition. The responses of the time-averaged thrust coefficient and the propulsive efficiency with respect to a stochastic flight velocity deviation were numerically investigated. The deviation was assumed to obey the Gauss distribution with a mean value of zero and a specified standard deviation. The probability distributions of the flapping performances were quantified by the non-intrusive polynomial chaos method. It was observed that both of the time-averaged thrust coefficient and the propulsive efficiency obeyed Gauss-like but not the exact Gauss distribution. The velocity deviation had a large effect on the time-averaged thrust coefficient and a small effect on the propulsive efficiency.