This study investigated the effect of chord deformation on the unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms found in hovering flapping flight at a Reynolds number of Re = 2002. This was done in order to get a better understanding of the physics involved in flapping flight, which in turn could lead to improved Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) designs. A three-dimensional numerical study was performed using an immersed boundary method (IBM) with the discrete forcing approach. The solver was first validated against an experiment by Kim and Gharib (2011).