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The present work investigates the mechanical behaviour of finite-size, elastic and inertial fibres freely moving in a homogeneous and isotropic turbulent flow at moderate Reynolds number. Fully-resolved, direct numerical simulations, based…
It has been repeatedly reported that the collective dynamics of social insects exhibit universal emergent properties similar to other complex systems. In this note, we study a previously published data set in which the positions of…
Some female moths attract male moths by emitting series of pulses of pheromone filaments propagating downwind. The turbulent nature of the wind creates a complex flow environment, and causes the filaments to propagate in the form of patches…
We are interested in a time harmonic acoustic problem in a waveguide containing flies. The flies are modelled by small sound soft obstacles. We explain how they should arrange to become invisible to an observer sending waves from $-\infty$…
Naturally ventilated buildings harness freely-available resources such as internal buoyancy gains and wind forcing in achieving comfortable interior conditions. Although these resources are free, they are time-variable and can be difficult…
In turbulent flows, tracking the source of a passive scalar cue requires exploiting the limited information that can be gleaned from rare, stochastic encounters with the cue. When crafting a search policy, the most challenging and important…
Bristle bots are vibration-driven robots actuated by the motion of an internal oscillating mass. Vibrations are translated into directed locomotion due to the alternating friction resistance between robots' bristles and the substrate during…
Flying animals possess highly complex physical characteristics and are capable of performing agile maneuvers using their wings. The flapping wings generate complex wake structures that influence the aerodynamic forces, which can be…
We discuss the problem of designing and implementing controllers for insect-scale flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs), from a unifying perspective and employing two different experimental platforms; namely, a Harvard RoboBee-like…
The mystery behind the bird nest's construction is not well understood. Our study focuses on the stability of a self-supporting nest-like structure. Firstly, we derived a stable/unstable phase boundary for the structure at the fixed…
We study the statistics of the horizontal component of atmospheric boundary layer wind speed. Motivated by its non-stationarity, we investigate which parameters remain constant or can be regarded as being piece-wise constant and explain how…
This paper presents a dynamic model and a control system for a flapping-wing unmanned aerial vehicle. Inspired by flight characteristics captured from live Monarch butterflies, a new dynamic model is presented to account the effects of…
Tiny flying insects of body lengths under 2 mm use the `clap-and-fling' mechanism with bristled wings for lift augmentation and drag reduction at chord-based Reynolds number ($Re$) on $\mathcal{O}$(10). We examine wing-wing interaction of…
Animals achieve robust locomotion by offloading regulation from the brain to physical couplings within the body. In contrast, locomotion in artificial systems often depends on centralized processors. We introduce a rapid and autonomous…
Fluid dynamics, and flight in particular, is a domain where organisms challenge our understanding of its physics. Integrating the current knowledge of animal flight, we propose to revisit the use of live animals to study physical phenomena.…
This paper investigates stability analysis of flapping flight. Due to time-varying aerodynamic forces, such systems do not display fixed points of equilibrium. The problem is therefore approached via a limit cycle analysis based on Floquet…
Unmanned underwater vehicles are increasingly employed for maintenance and surveying tasks at sea, but their operation in shallow waters is often hindered by hydrodynamic disturbances such as waves, currents, and turbulence. These unsteady…
Avian-informed drones feature morphing wing and tail surfaces, enhancing agility and adaptability in flight. Despite their large potential, realising their full capabilities remains challenging due to the lack of generalized control…
Soaring birds gain energy from stable ascending currents or shear. However, it remains unclear whether energy loss due to drag can be overcome by extracting work from transient turbulent fluctuations. We designed numerical simulations of…
Flapping animal flight is often modeled as a combined pitching and heaving motion in order to investigate the unsteady flow structures and resulting forces that could augment the animal's lift and propulsive capabilities. This work isolates…