Looking for a science fair project that will stand out from the crowd? Flapping-wing flight offers many opportunities for school science fair projects. In fact, high school students can carry out significant new research that will advance our understanding of flapping wings. This may not be the case in other fields, which have been more fully studied. Ornithopter projects can be adapted to suit a large or small budget. In most cases, much can be learned by experimenting with simple rubber-band-powered models instead of radio-controlled ornithopters.

Many science fairs require that you have a hypothesis and conduct an experiment to determine whether or not your hypothesis is correct. (It doesn't matter whether the hypethesis turns out to be true or false. What matters is that you use appropriate methods to determine whether it is true or false.) Other science fairs, often called "science and engineering" or "science and technology" fairs, allow you to address an engineering problem without having to do a formal experiment. Make sure you know the rules before choosing a project. We've listed some project ideas, and we've separated them, depending on whether the project is an experiment or an engineering task.

Science Fair Experiments

1. Flapping-Wing Aircraft for Bird Control.

Flocks of birds are a safety hazard at airports. They can damage airplanes, and they have even caused fatal crashes. Birds can be scared away using a variety of methods, including trained falcons, which chase the birds. Falcons don't always cooperate though, so a radio-controlled ornithopter offers the possibility for more effective bird control. That is, if the birds can be effectively driven away by something that is not a real predator.

A variety of experiments could be used to assess the potential use of ornithopters for bird control. You need to choose an objective way of measuring how the birds react. You could go to a field or beach where gulls or geese gather, fly an RC ornithopter there, and measure how quickly the birds return after the flight. You might want to get permission from the parks department before conducting experiments like this in a local park. You want the authorities to know you are conducting an experiment and not harassing wildlife. Your activities will not harm the birds.

• Hypothesis: Flock scattering is greatest if the ornithopter flapping rate matches that of a natural predator.
• Hypothesis: Bird response to a simulated predator will diminish through successive presentations.

If you don't have the funds to work with real ornithopters in an outdoor setting, you could show artificial stimuli to a pet bird to assess how it reacts to various characteristics, such as flapping rate.

2. Flapping cycle. Most ornithopters use a crank mechanism that produces a sine-wave motion of the wings. Is that way the best? Use various cams, or other mechanisms, to flap the wings in different ways. Be careful to insure that the power consumption (motor voltage times current) is the same in all cases. For this project, you can test various flapping mechanisms on a bench setup without actually having to build a whole ornithopter that can fly.

• Hypothesis: Flapping the wings in a sawtooth waveform is more efficient than the traditional sine wave.

3. Torsion of thick-airfoil wings. Most ornithopters use a sail-like membrane wing. Other wing designs, having ribs like an airplane wing, or a thick foam airfoil, have been used, but they don't always work. Having the correct amount of torsional flexibility in the inner and outer parts of the wing could be the key to success. (For better stability, use an airplane-style tail with these models.) See if you can come up with a mathematical prediction as to why this hypothesis might be found true:

• Hypothesis: Flight performance is increased when torsional flexibility diminishes from the wing root to the tip.

4. Aspect ratio. For other aircraft types, a high aspect ratio (long narrow wings) results in higher efficiency. Is this true for ornithopters as well? Wing area and power output should be the same for all wings tested. Power output must be kept the same despite the greater torque needed to flap the high-aspect wings. You'll need to change the gear ratio or use rubber bands of different thickness so different wings all get the same amount of power. (power = torque x flapping rate)

• Hypothesis: Higher aspect ratio improves ornithopter flight performance at a given power input.

Science Fair Engineering Tasks

For any of these science and engineering fair projects, you would begin by doing some background research to find out how birds or insects have solved the same problem.

1. Develop an ornithopter capable of stable hovering flight. This could be radio controlled, or it could be a rubber-band-powered freeflight model. Either way, you can experiment with various ways of making the ornithopter more stable.

2. Design and build a device that would allow an ornithopter to perch on a limb. This is something no one has done yet, but once we solve the hovering problem it will be the next step. And you could bypass the hovering issue and just work on perching. Just swing the perching apparatus on a cord so that it reaches the perch with a known speed and direction. You would of course do some background research on how birds perch before you begin.

3. Develop an ornithopter that mimics the wing motions of a dragonfly, in order to increase maneuverability.

4. Develop an original wing design that more closely mimics a real bird or insect wing.

5. Develop an effective roll-control system for an ornithopter. Airplanes use wing flaps called ailerons to bank left and right for turns. Ornithopters generally rely on their tails for turning, and this limits their maneuverability. Roll control could be achieved by changing the shape or stiffness of the wings, or by changing how they flap.

More ideas? If you have other ideas you would like to share, contact us and we can add them to the web site.