Flexible parylene-valved skin for adaptive flow control

This paper describes the first work of using wafer-sized flexible parylene-valved actuator skins (total thickness ~20 µm) for micro adaptive flow control. The check-valved actuator skins feature vent-through holes with tethered valve caps on the membrane to regulate pressure distribution across the skins. The skins were integrated onto MEMS wings and were tested in the low-speed wind tunnel for aerodynamic evaluation. The test results have shown very significant effects on the aerodynamic performances. Compare to the reference MEMS wings (no actuators), both the lift and thrust of the parylene check-valved wings were improved by more than 50%. This is the first experimental result to demonstrate that the application of MEMS actuator skins for flow control is very promising.