I dont mean to be critical but there are no wheels in nature so where did we get that idea? Alexander Graham Bell beat the Wright brothers by reintroducing the wheel into the motion that they were already trying to patent - wing warping, in order to come up with ailerons.

This is a deformable wing with a fly wheel embedded in it. The same force that keeps a bicycle wheel turning when you hold it by its axle will keep the deformable wing flapping and keep your Fly Wheel Wing in the air.
-- JesusHChrist, Dec 02 2016

"The bacterial flagellum is driven by a rotary engine (Mot complex) made up of protein, located at the flagellum's anchor point on the inner cell membrane. " If we're going for rotary, then tumble-weed and the dung beetle spring to mind...
-- not_morrison_rm, Dec 02 2016


OK, so you want an ornithopter in which the energy storage comes from a flywheel, yes?

Basic problem: flywheels don't have a great energy density. The only ways to make them store more energy are either to have them spin much faster (and then there's a limit, because of centrifugal stresses on the flywheel) or to make them heavier (which means you need more power to lift them off the ground).

Also, an ornithopter needs intermittent power (mainly for the downstroke), which is not well suited to flywheel drive.

If you want an ornithopter, power it with a conventional engine or an electric motor.

More generally, you seem to have this incorrect idea that almost any form of thrashing about will be sufficient to allow you to rise, bird-like, from the ground. It won't.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 02 2016


The ornithopter is a spongy piece of foam in the shape of a slice of cheese, with a gently faded edge. If you embedded a fly wheel or a top, anything spinning, at the big end of the cheese slice, at one of the corners, the spinning wheel would impart its energy adaptively to the sponge so that the overall effect would be a flap.
-- JesusHChrist, Dec 03 2016


No, it wouldn't. Basic physics seem to have gone out the window here.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 03 2016


You would get a flap if your flywheel is unbalanced and matched to the resonant frequency of the wings - you would then power the flywheel conventionally. I would imagine that the aeroelastic effects would be exciting.
-- TomP, Dec 04 2016



random, halfbakery