On the Efficiency of Bio-inspired Dual-wing Generator

Bird flight, with its simplicity, elegance and efficiency, has garnered much interest in scientific and engineering projects. In 2014, Festo, a German robotics company inspired by how efficient a bird wing can produce lift,... [ view full abstract ]

Bird flight, with its simplicity, elegance and efficiency, has garnered much interest in scientific and engineering projects. In 2014, Festo, a German robotics company inspired by how efficient a bird wing can produce lift, built a dual-wing generator (DWG) that mimics the movement of wings in flight to extract wind energy and produce electricity. It claims its prototype achieves higher efficiency than current wind turbines at low wind speeds. My project uses software package COMSOL’s computational fluid dynamics module (CFD), a finite-element solver, to model several different configurations of the dual-wing system immersed in the air. The project evaluates the efficiency of the system to extract wind energy by calculating the lift on the airfoils, and verifies the DWG’s higher energy output than traditional wind turbines from a quasi-static perspective.