Related papers: Fruit flies modulate passive wing pitching to gene…
Tail bending associated with maneuvering flight of insects is a known phenomenon although there are only a few studies which analyze and quantify the effects and benefits of body configuration changes. We hypothesized that these…
Hummingbirds and insects achieve outstanding flight performance by adapting their flapping motion to the flight requirements. Their wing kinematics can change from smooth flapping to highly dynamic waveforms, generating unsteady aerodynamic…
While dragonflies are highly agile flyers, some key aerodynamic mechanisms responsible for their flight performance remain inadequately understood. Based on forward flight conditions, we investigate dragonfliess spanwise aerodynamic…
The large active wing deformation is a significant way to generate high aerodynamic forces required in bat flapping flight. Besides the twisting, the elementary morphing models of a bat wing are proposed, such as wing-bending in the…
The flexibility of biological propulsors such as wings and fins is believed to contribute to the higher performance of flying and swimming animals compared with their engineered peers. Flexibility seems to follow a universal design rule…
We investigate the effect of wing twist flexibility on lift and efficiency of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle capable of liftoff. Wings used previously were chosen to be fully rigid due to modeling and fabrication constraints. However,…
In many animals, rhythmic motor activity is governed by neural limit cycle oscillations under the control of sensory feedback. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the wingbeat rhythm is generated myogenically by stretch-activated…
Unlike a helicopter, an insect can, in theory, use both lift and drag to stay aloft. Here we show that a dragonfly uses mostly drag to hover by employing asymmetric up and down strokes. Computations of a family of strokes further show that…
Insect wings can undergo significant deformation during flapping motion owing to inertial, elastic and aerodynamic forces. Changes in shape then alter aerodynamic forces, resulting in a fully coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI)…
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…
Wing flexibility plays an essential role in the aerodynamic performance of insects due to the considerable deformation of their wings during flight under the impact of inertial and aerodynamic forces. These forces come from the complex wing…
The ability to fly through openings in vegetation allows insects like bees to access otherwise unreachable food sources. The specific visual strategies employed by flying insects during aperture negotiation tasks remain unknown. In this…
Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping-wings are dominated by large-scale vortical…
There are numerous devices currently known with the purpose of reducing the irregularity of the flow upstream of the propeller and to decrease by that means the propeller-induced vibration and noise. Many of these devices are wing-shaped…
We present a model study of gliding assays in which actin filaments are moved by non-processive myosin motors. We show that even if the power stroke of the motor protein has no lateral component, the filaments will rotate around their axis…
Many kinds of adult Lepidoptera insects possess a long proboscis which is used to suck liquids and has the coiling and uncoiling movements. Although experiments revealed qualitatively that the coiling movement is governed by the hydraulic…
Most animals possess the ability to actuate a vast diversity of movements, ostensibly constrained only by morphology and physics. In practice, however, a frequent assumption in behavioral science is that most of an animal's activities can…
Flapping-wing insects, birds, and robots are thought to offset the high power cost of oscillatory wing motion by using elastic elements for energy storage and return. Insects possess highly resilient elastic regions in their flight anatomy…
The aerial environment in the operating domain of small-scale natural and artificial flapping wing fliers is highly complex, unsteady and generally turbulent. Considering flapping flight in an unsteady wind environment with a periodically…
Inverted landing is a challenging feat to perform in aerial robots, especially without external positioning. However, it is routinely performed by biological fliers such as bees, flies, and bats. Our previous observations of landing…