Related papers: Dragonflies Utilize Flapping Wings Phasing and Spa…
Linear stability analysis of an elastically anchored wing in a uniform flow is investigated both analytically and numerically. The analytical formulation explicitly takes into account the effect of the wake on the wing by means of…
Long arrays of identical, self-propelling flapping flyers are inherently unstable and thus unlikely to exist without active control mechanisms. One approach to enable long in-line formations is to enforce a constant separation between the…
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…
We investigate the spatial distributions and production mechanisms of vorticity and turbulent kinetic energy around a finite NACA 0018 wing with square wingtip profile at $Re_c=10^4$ and $10^{\circ}$ angle of attack with the aid of Direct…
The influence of the bending rigidity of a flexible heaving wing on its propulsive performance in a two-dimensional imposed parallel flow is investigated in the inviscid limit. Potential flow theory is used to describe the flow over the…
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…
The natural wind environment that volant insects encounter is unsteady and highly complex, posing significant flight control and stability challenges. Unsteady airflows can range from structured chains of discrete vortices shed in the wake…
We investigate the dynamics and the stability of the incompressible flow past a corrugated dragonfly-inspired airfoil in the two-dimensional (2D) $\alpha-Re$ parameter space, where $\alpha$ is the angle of attack and $Re$ is the Reynolds…
The present work is concerned with the shape optimization of flapping wings in forward flight. The analysis is performed by combining a gradient-based optimizer with the unsteady vortex lattice method (UVLM). We describe the UVLM…
This study reports on the vortex-induced lift production mechanisms in low Reynolds number flows over low aspect-ratio rectangular wings. We use a rigorous force partitioning method which allows for the estimation of the pressure-induced…
Unsteady inviscid flow models of wings and airfoils have been developed to study the aerodynamics of natural and man-made flyers. Vortex methods have been extensively applied to reduce the dimensionality of these aerodynamic models, based…
We experimentally study the aeroelastic instability boundaries and three-dimensional vortex dynamics of pitching swept wings, with the sweep angle ranging from 0 to 25 degrees. The structural dynamics of the wings are simulated using a…
This study employs an improved delayed detached eddy simulation (AMD-IDDES) method to investigate the flow characteristics of an iced swept wing. The AMD-IDDES approach incorporates an anisotropic minimum-dissipation (AMD) model into the…
This work describes a novel mechanism of laminar flow control of a backward swept wing with a comb-like leading edge device. It is inspired by the leading-edge comb on owl feathers and the special design of its barbs, resembling a cascade…
The effect of air viscosity on the flow around an insect wing increases as insect size decreases. For the smallest insects (wing length R below 1 mm), the viscous effect is so large that lift-generation mechanisms used by their larger…
Turbulence grounds aircraft and combating it in flight requires energy, yet volant wildlife fly effortlessly even on windy days. The nature of the interactions between soaring birds and transient turbulent gusts is not clear, especially…
Inspired by flight characteristics captured from live Monarch butterflies, an optimal control problem is presented while accounting the effects of low-frequency flapping and abdomen undulation. A flapping-wing aerial vehicle is modeled as…
Insects and birds are often faced by opposing requirements for agile and stable flight. Here, we explore the interplay between aerodynamic effort, maneuverability, and stability in a model system that consists of a $\Lambda$-shaped flyer…
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…
During the pull-out maneuver, Peregrine falcons were observed to adopt specific flight configurations which are thought to offer an aerodynamic advantage over aerial prey. Analysis of the flight trajectory of a falcon in a controlled…