Simulation for Folding/Unfolding of an Artificial Beetle Wing by ADAMS

Azhar Muhammad1,3, Hoon C. Park1,3,4, Do Y. Hwang4, Doyoung Byun2,3,4, Nam S. Goo1,3,4

1

Department of Advanced Technology Fusion, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Korea;

2

Department of Aerospace Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Korea;

4

National Research Laboratory for Biomimetics and Microsystems, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Korea; Artificial Muscle Research Center, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Korea

Abstract
This paper introduces ADAMS simulations of an artificial wing to demonstrate folding and unfolding mechanism of a beetles hind wing. Based on the four-panel theory, an artificial wing is fabricated with fourseparated panels and the four panels are attached together by thin plastic tapes. The artificial wing is successfully unfolded from a folded configuration by actuation of a shape memory alloy (SMA) wire. In the simulation, we used solid elements to model the four panels and linear springs and non-linear springs to replace the plastic tapes. Important parameters such as the contact stiffness and contact damping are calculated such that they can be physically acceptable. The simulations have demonstrated a successful folding and unfolding of the wing. increasing the angle to 180o as demonstrated in Introduction Figure 2(b). Actually, 180o is not enough to A beetle is a unique insect in the sense that it maintain the unfolding shape when the artificial flies by flapping hind wings while extending front wing is being flapped even at low frequency. To wings (elytra). Hind wings are unfolded when the prevent folding back motion of the wing during elytra are extended for flight, and fold/stowed flapping, this angle should be at least a little larger under the elytra for ground locomotion. Such hind than 180o to create a locking mechanism. wings can be called morphing wings because the shape is variable. The morphing wing concept is recently drawing much attention due to the increased interest in small size and portable micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). In this paper, we first summarize an existing working principle for the wing folding and unfolding. Then we introduce an artificial wing Figure 1. Configuration of basic mechanism[2] that can be unfolded from a folded configuration by electrical activation of SMA wire. Finally simulations of the folding and unfolding of the artificial wing are demonstrated by using ADAMS.

Approximated Mechanism on Folding and Unfolding Motion

Wing

(a) Folding motion

The basic mechanism[1], which was introduced by Haas et al., is explicating the working principle of folding and unfolding motion of a beetle hind wing by using a rectangular wing model. This model comprises of four stiff panels, four folding lines, and a point of origin, where two stiff panels are bordered by a folding line and all those folding lines intersect each other in the point of origin as shown in Figure 1. A panel is the representation of a wing membrane region. In Figure 2(a), folding motion is created by decreasing the angle to 0o, which is regarded as wing base motion. Inversely, full unfolding configuration is constructed by

(b) Unfolding motion Figure 2. Demonstration of basic mechanism[2]

Since there are many kinds of beetles, the combination of stiff panels and folding lines mentioned above is not the only model in mimicking their folding and unfolding motions. There are other wing configurations, yet some are not foldable, and it depends on its degree of freedom[1] as formulized in Equation (1),

M = 3P 2C ,

(1)

4), which is about 50% longer than the typical Allomyrina Dichotomas hind wing.

where M is degree of freedom, P is the number of moving panels, and C is the number of folding lines. When the degree of freedom of an artificial hind wing equals to one or larger, then the folding and unfolding motion is determinable. Otherwise, artificial hind wing is not foldable.

Demonstration of Artificial Hind Wing

We have attempted to implement the idea of the basic mechanism into Allomyrina Dichotomas hind wing[3]. The anatomy of this species hind wing is observed, and then stiff panels and folding lines are specified. In addition, the real wing opening process is investigated, and it is found that this species performs two independent folding and unfolding motions which involve 5 folding lines, 5 membrane regions, and a point of origin (Figure 3). One of those two motions occurs around the innermost part (anal fold) and does not significantly affect the folding ratio (ratio of area between unfolded wing and folded wing), thus we disregard this folding motion. Due to this simplification, then four stiff panels, four folding lines, and a point of origin are remaining.
(a) Span and folding lines

(b) Panels and added panel Figure 4. Artificial hind wing with real folding lines

The artificial wing is folded by holding panel 4 and rotating panel 1 with respect to the inner longitudinal fold (LF) line or folding line 4. Because the three unfixed panels are coupled, then the other two panels will be concurrently folded. Unfortunately, this artificial hind wing cannot be perfectly folded. The folding motion stops when panel 1 collides panel 2. As shown in Figure 5, when these two panels meet each other, the angle between panel 2 and panel 3 becomes about 90o, where panel 3 is vertically stuck. It prevents this model from being further folded.

Figure 3. Allomyrina Dichotoma's hind wing

The artificial hind wing is made of a 1 mm thick carton, which is cut following the real hind wings outer contour, then split into four panels along the folding lines. Two small panels allotted for the installation of actuation devices, which then regarded as the wing base, is added nearby the wing articulation. After arranging the panels according to the real appearance, then two pieces of 15 micron transparent BOPP (Bi-axially Oriented Polypropylene) adhesive tapes are used to attach and merge them at the front and back sides, respectively. Hinges are created by slicing the front tapes along their corresponding folding lines, except the hinge that represents the outer longitudinal fold (LF) line. Excluding the added panel, span of this artificial wing is 7.5 cm (Figure

Figure 5. Non-foldable artificial hind wing

In order to avoid this problem, we made a slight modification by slicing the transverse fold (TF) lines or folding line 3 in vertical direction (Figure 6), not following the real one which actually inclined. By this modification, collision between panel 1 and 2 still exists, yet panel 2 and panel 3 are not perpendicular, and panel 3 is no longer in vertical position. Therefore, the shove given by panel 1 with respect to panel 2 may lead to a complete folding configuration.

motion. It consists of a piece of 0.4 mm diameter NiTi SMA wire inserted into two carbon sliders, which are installed at the upper base and lower base. Lubricant is sufficiently added to reduce the existing friction force. Initially, the artificial wing is manually folded, then 5V and 1.5 A electric power is applied into the SMA wire to unfold it within about 3 seconds as shown in Figure 8.
(a) Span and folding lines

(b) Panels and added panel Figure 6. Artificial hind wing with modified folding lines

Figure 7 shows the sequential folding and unfolding motions, which is manually actuated. As can be seen in this figure, panels are rotating with respect to their corresponding folding lines, thus tapes can be considered to work like flexible hinges that connect two adjacent panels.

Figure 8. Unfolding motion actuated by SMA wire[3]

Actuation force generated by the SMA wire is measured in folding configuration by fixing the upper additional panel, attaching the lower additional panel to the load cell (Nano17 Transducer, ATI Industrial Automation Inc) as shown in Figure 9, and then activate the electric power. As time goes by, the produced torque on the wing base with 4 mm moment arm increases linearly as shown in Figure 10.

(a) Folding motion

Figure 9. Measuring actuation force working on wing base

(b) Unfolding motion Figure 7. Manual actuation

A set of actuation system is installed at the wing base to electrically actuate the unfolding

Figure 10. Torque acting on the wing base due to the actuation of SMA wire

Kinetic Simulation
In an attempt to build a virtual model of the experiment elucidated above and study the effects of the influencing parameters, we conduct a simulation in ADAMS by modeling all the parts of the artificial wing except the actuation system. The outer contours of all panels have been drawn in a CAD software (AutoCAD) prior to importing them to ADAMS for further development. Two cases of simulations are presented in this paper; implementation of linear tension spring as the first case and non linear tension spring for the second one. Case I Properties of springs Adhesive apes, which have been regarded as flexible hinges, are modeled by parallelly distributing massless springs that obey Hookes Law. Spring constants are acquired from Equation (2),
i KE =

where Cc i is the critical damping coefficient. Due to conservative reason and coupling motion, mcoupling always equals to the sum of masses of panels 1, 2, and 3. As well as spring constant, damping coefficient of each spring is also inversely proportional with respect to the total number of springs (Equation (5)) along the concerning folding line when they are paralelly configured.
i Cc S =

Cc i ni

(5)

Typical material properties of carton and adhesive tape are available in Table 1. Table 2 gives the properties of each folding line, i.e. gap, length, and number of springs. Table 3 provides masses of panels. While, spring constants and damping coefficients are summarized in Table 4.
Table 1. Material properties of carton and adhesive tape Property Carton[4] 615 4.46E+09 BOPP film[5] 890 910 1.70E+09 2.40E+09

AE, g

(2)

(kg.m )
-3

E (Pa)

i where K E is the equivalent spring constant, E is Youngs modulus, g is the distance or gap between two adjacent panels and superscript i denotes the folding line number. Ai is the area of tapes cross section that can be obtained from the multiplication between thickness of adhesive tape and length of the regarding folding line ( l i ). i In parallel, the stiffness of each spring ( K S ) is inversely proportional to the quantity of springs along the corresponding folding line ( n i ) which can be expressed by Equation (3),

Table 2. Folding lines: gap, length, and number of spring Folding line 1 2 3 4

g
(m) 0.150E-3 0.150E-3 0.150E-3 0.150E-3

li
(m) 0.677E-02 3.431E-02 2.124E-02 5.331E-02

ni
4 18 10 18

Table 3. Masses of panels

Panel
i KS = i KE . ni

m
(kg) 2.233E-04 2.259E-04 3.165E-04 8.346E-04

(3)

1 2 3 4

Fluctuation that may occur is checked by using the artificial wing subjected to gravitational load, fixing panel 3, and then releasing panel 1. There is no significant swing. It suppresses within a very short time, therefore the damping coefficients are set to their critical values according to Equation (4),
i Cc i = 2 K E mcoupling

Table 4. Spring constants and damping coefficients of case 1 Folding line 1 2 3 4

i KS
i Cc S

(N.m-1) 3.386E+05 3.812E+05 4.248E+05 5.923E+05

(N.s.m-1) 1.610E+01 0.805E+01 1.1410E+01 1.004E+01

(4)

Properties of collisions In dealing with a contact problem, there are some parameters that need to be specified, i.e. the contact stiffness, contact damping, force exponent, and depth of penetration. Among them, the contact stiffness is very critical since it affects both accuracy and convergence. A high contact stiffness leads to minimum penetration and gives a good accuracy, yet the contacting surfaces will bounce each other, and cause convergence difficulties. Best values are determined by trial and error. In this simulation, the last two parameters mentioned above are kept to the default values in ADAMS, meanwhile the contact stiffness and the contact damping are approximated. Frictions between panels are ignored. Because the contacts in the wing folding are not related to bending structures, we may consider them as bulky contact problems. The contact stiffness is simply estimated as in Equation (6)[6],
K contact = EFbulk
(6)

presented in Figure 11 to fold it also in 3 seconds. After folding, the actuation torque is held on the maximum value (-3.25 N.m) for a second, and then released abruptly to zero. To create unfolding configuration, then the actuation torque which resulted from experiment (Figure 10) is subjected. The resulted sequential folding and unfolding motions are shown in Figure 12.

Figure 11. Loading scenario of case 1

where K contact is contact stiffness, E is Youngs Modulus, and Fbulk is bulky factor that usually ranging from 0.1 to 10. At the beginning, bulky factor is set to the minimum value, afterwards increased gradually until there is no penetration. It is believed that there is no meaningful vibration when panels collide each other, so that the contact dampings are estimated by Equation (7),
Cccontact = 2 K contact mcontact
(7)

(a) Folding motion

where Cccontact is the critical contact damping and mcontact equals to the mass summation of two contacting panels. Contact stiffness and contact dampings are listed in Table 5.
Table 5. Contact stiffness and contact dampings of case 1 Between panels 1&2 2&3 3&4 4&1 4.46E+10 ( Fbulk = 10 )

(b) Unfolding motion Figure 12. Sequential motion of case 1

K contact
(N.m-1)

Cccontact
(N.s.m-1) 0.895E+04 0.983E+04 1.433E+04 1.374E+04

Since the artificial wing spends about 3 seconds to construct perfect unfolding shape in the experiment, thus we arrange a scenario as

The torque required to create folding motion in the specified time above is obtained from the simulation by trial and error. As shown in Figure 11, the magnitude is very large, about more than two thousand times than that to unfold. This large torque is to overcome the forces produced by springs that experience large deformations. Meanwhile, wing unfolding motion occurs very fast right after the actuation torque is released instantly. It is caused by a large energy stored on the spring during folding configuration. As the consequence, the unfolding motion does not start from fully folded shape and perfect unfolding configuration is fully constructed in about 1.5

seconds, less than 3 seconds that averagely spent in the experiment. Due to the conditions applied to the springs, the torque obtained to fold the wing is unreasonable. Furthermore, relatively high contact stiffness is needed to prevent penetrations. Therefore, further modification is necessitated. Case II Properties of springs In the experiment, we can observe that, the adhesive tapes in some regions are largely exposed during folding. In these areas, the distances between two adjacent plates become larger than their initial gaps. Therefore, we assume that the attaching force at the edge of each panel will loosen after the tape undergoes 1.510-5 m of elongation (10% of initial gap), so that the adhesive tape will have new length (new gap) every time it experiences the assumed elongation. Table 6 shows the way to define force displacement relationship for springs in folding line 1, by applying Equations 8, 9, 10, and 11.
i KEj

By the same manner, forcedisplacement relationships for springs in each folding line can be obtained as shown in Figures 13(a), (b), (c), and (d). Linear extrapolation is applied to anticipate if the occurring spring deformations exceed the defined values.

(a) Force displacement relationship in folding line 1

Ai E = gj

(b) Force displacement relationship in folding line 2

(8)

i F ji = K E j d assumed

(9)

FSi j =

F ji ni

(10)

(c) Force displacement relationship in folding line 3

g j +1 = g j + d assumed
where, j = 1, 2, 3,L, n

(11)

g1 = 1.5 10 4 m d assumed = 1.5 10 m

Table 6. Force displacement relationship of a spring in folding line 1
5

(d) Force displacement relationship in folding line 4 Figure 13. Force - displacement relationships of springs

gj
(m) 1.500E-04 1.650E-04 1.800E-04

d assumed
(m) 1.510 1.510-5 1.510-5 1.510-5 1.510-5
-5

K1 j E
(N.m-1) 1.354E+06 1.231E+06 1.129E+06

F j1
(N) 2.031E+01 1.847E+01 1.693E+01

FS1j
(N) 5.078E+00 4.617E+00 4.232E+00

M
2.985E-03 3.000E-03

M
6.805E+04 6.771E+04

M
1.021E+00 1.016E+00

M
2.552E-01 2.539E-01

Properties of collisions Similar to case 1, properties of collisions for the second case are estimated as in Equations (6) and (7) by initially setting the bulky factor to the minimum value, then increasing it until the penetration is negligible. As shown in Table 7, the magnitude of contact stiffness required in this case is smaller since the actuation torque and produced spring forces are less than in the previous case.

Contact dampings also become smaller as the contact stiffness reduces.

Table 7. Contact stiffness and contact dampings of case 2 Between panel 1&2 2&3 3&4 4&1 4.46E+09 ( Fbulk = 1 )

K contact
(N.m )
-1

Cccontact
(N.s.m-1) 2.831E+03 3.111E+03 4.532E+03 4.344E+03 (a) Folding motion

As in the first case, case 2 has the same loading history, yet with different magnitude in the first 3 seconds as shown in Figure 14. The magnitude is also obtained by trial and error as well. Folding configuration can be fully constructed by applying -4510-3 N.m of body fixed torque on the wing base. This value is about 1.5% of the required actuation torque in case 1. Right after the folding torque is released sharply, the virtual wing opens instantly, just like in the first case. It is led by the produced spring forces that increase as the springs become shorter. By applying the actuation torque measured from experiment (Figure 10), most significant unfolding motion finishes after about 1.5 seconds. If three seconds are spent, then there will be just slight difference of the unfolding configuration, where the angle of the adjacent panels on the wing base is larger, strengthening the locking mechanism. Folding and unfolding motions in sequential mode are presented in Figure 15. Table 8 summarizes some parameters that can be used to compare the experiment result with the simulations where linear and non-linear springs are used to model the adhesive tape. In terms of kinematics, both of the simulation results look similar to the artificial wing. Nevertheless, the wing in case 2 is more representative since it requires less actuation torque to fold the virtual wing in about three seconds and produces lower spring forces especially when the springs experience large deformations.

(b) Unfolding motion Figure 15. Sequential motion of case 2 Table 8. Comparison between experiment and simulations Parameters Folding ratio Fold Experiment 1.82 0 1.5E-3 (linear in time) 3 1.82 0 3.25 (linear in time) 0 1.5E-3 (linear in time) 2.65 1.5 Simulations Case 1 Case 2 1.82 0 45E-3 (linear in time) 0 1.5E-3 (linear in time) 2.8 1.5

Torque required (N.m)

Unfold Fold Unfold

Time spent (s)

Conclusion
In this work, we have conducted simulations on folding and unfolding motions of Allomyrina Dichotomas hind wing according to the fourpanel theory. In the experiment, adhesive tapes are used to connect as well as to hinge two adjacent panels of an artificial wing. Multiple distributed springs along a particular folding line are implemented in the virtual model to replace the tape in the corresponding folding line. When the springs are assumed to act linearly, the torque required to fold the virtual wing in three seconds is very high. Furthermore, relatively high contact stiffness is needed to preclude penetration. Based on the evidence about the tapes where in some regions become more exposed as the

Figure 14. Loading scenario of case 2

artificial wing is folded, we assume that the tapes can be replaced by non-linear springs. In the simulations by ADAMS, the two unfolding motions in both cases are quite similar to each other. They take about 1.5 seconds to unfold perfectly, which is two times faster than the artificial wings unfolding. However, in case 1, the required actuation torque for folding is unrealistically large. Thus, the application of nonlinear spring is found to be very effective for simulation of the wing folding and unfolding.

References
1. Haas F, Wootton R J. Two basic mechanisms in insect wing folding. Proc R Soc London Ser B, 1996, 263: 1651 1658 2. Haas F. Wing folding in insects: A natural deployable structure. In: Pellegrino S, Guest SD, eds. IUTAM-IASS Symposium on Deployable Structures: Theory and Applications. London: Kluwer Academic Pub, 2000. 137 142 3. Azhar Muhammad, Park H C, Hwang D Y, et al. Mimicking unfolding motion of a beetle hind wing. Chin Sci Bull. 4. Hicks B J, Mullineux G, Sirkett D. A finite elementbased approach for whole-system simulation of packaging systems for their improved design and operation. Packag Technol Sci, 2009 5. Bary M A. Handbook of Plastic Films. Bary M A, ed. Shawbury: Rapra Technology Limited, 2003. 6. Ansys Training Manual 7. Roadmap to ADAMS Documentation