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The flows behind a model wind turbine under two turbine operating regimes are investigated using wind tunnel experiments and large-eddy simulations. Measurements from the model wind turbine experiment reveal that the power coefficient and…
Efficient real-time trajectory planning and control for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles is challenging due to their non-holonomic nature, complex dynamics, and the additional uncertainties introduced by unknown aerodynamic effects. In…
The propulsion of a flapping wing or foil is emblematic of bird flight and fish swimming. Previous studies have identified hallmarks of the propulsive dynamics that have been attributed to unsteady effects such as the formation and shedding…
In many insect species, the thoracic structure plays a crucial role in enabling flight. In the dipteran indirect flight mechanism, the thorax acts as a transmission link between the flight muscles and the wings, and it is often thought to…
Advanced mobility concepts such as Urban Air Mobility are emerging in full swing. In that concept, a safe and efficient aviation transportation system will use highly automated aircraft that will transport passengers or cargo at low…
Natural fliers like bats exploit the complex fluid-structure interaction between their flexible membrane wings and the air with great ease. Yet, replicating and scaling the balance between the structural and fluid-dynamical parameters of…
Safe and accurate control of unmanned aerial vehicles in the presence of winds is a challenging control problem due to the hard-to-model and highly stochastic nature of the disturbance forces acting upon the vehicle. To meet performance…
Humpback whales can generate intricate bubbly regions, called bubble nets, via their blowholes. They appear to exploit these bubble nets for feeding via loud vocalizations. A fully-coupled phase-averaging approach is used to model the flow,…
The transport of energy, mass, and momentum in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) is regulated by coherent structures. Although past studies have primarily focused on stationary ABL flows, the majority of real-world ABL flows are…
The wake of a body moving across the isopycnals of a strongly stratified fluid is characterized by the presence of an intense jet which, under certain circumstances, may become unstable. To get insight into the phenomenology of this…
Our goal in this work is to expand the theory and practice of robot locomotion by addressing critical challenges associated with the robotic biomimicry of bat aerial locomotion. Bats are known for their pronounced, fast wing articulations,…
This work reports an experimental characterisation of the flow properties in a homogeneous bubble swarm rising at high-Reynolds-numbers within a homogeneous and isotropic turbulent flow. Both the gas volume fraction {\alpha} and the…
The mechanisms associated with an owls ability to fly silently have been the subject of scientific interest for many decades and a source of inspiration in the context of reducing noise in both flapping and non-flapping flight. Here, we…
Small, low-speed fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) operating autonomously, beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) will inevitably encounter winds rising to levels near or exceeding the vehicles' nominal airspeed. In this paper, we…
This study delves into the aerodynamic behavior of a highly flexible NACA 0012 aerofoil, drawing inspiration from avian feathers to handle a gust. We first examined unsteady flow on a rigid wing both experimentally and numerically and then…
We present a steady jet flow-based flow control of flexible membrane wings for an adaptive and efficient motion of bat-inspired drones in complex flight environments. A body-fitted variational computational aeroelastic framework is adopted…
Airborne Wind Energy is a lightweight technology that allows power extraction from the wind using airborne devices such as kites and gliders, where the airfoil orientation can be dynamically controlled in order to maximize performance. The…
Many multi-agent systems in nature are comprised of agents that interact with, and respond to, the dynamics of their environment. In this paper, we approach the study of such agent-environment interactions through the study of passively…
The albatross optimized flight maneuver -- known as dynamic soaring -- is nothing but a wonder of biology, physics, and engineering. By utilizing dynamic soaring, the bird can travel in the desired flight direction almost for free by…
Active turbulence, or chaotic self-organized collective motion, is often observed in concentrated suspensions of motile bacteria and other systems of self-propelled interacting agents. To date, there is no fundamental understanding of how…