Aeromechanics of Hovering Flight in Perturbed Flows: Insights from Computational Models and Animal Experiments

Stability of flapping flight, a natural requirement for flying insects, is one of the major challenges for designing micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). To better understand how a flying insect could stabilize itself during hover, we have employed a fully coupled computational model, which combines the Navier-Strokes equations and the equations of motion in six degrees-of-freedom (NS6DOF) to model the hovering flight of a hawkmoth. These simulations are combined with high-speed videogrammetry experiments on live, untethered hawkmoths flying in quiescent and perturbed flows. The flight videos were used to identify a potential mechanism that could be used by the moth to stabilize its hovering flight; the effectiveness of this mechanism was investigated using CFD-based simulations and semi-analytic approximations.