Related papers: Optimized Body Deformation in Dragonfly Maneuvers
Insects use flight muscles attached at the base of the wings to produce impressive wing flapping frequencies. The maximum power output of these flight muscles is insufficient to maintain such wing oscillations unless there is good elastic…
Insects excel in trajectory and attitude handling during flight, yet the specific kinematic behaviours they use for maintaining stability in air disturbances are not fully understood. This study investigates the adaptive strategies of…
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…
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…
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…
Morphing aerial vehicles offer enhanced maneuverability and fuel efficiency compared to fixed-wing configurations. However, the trade-off between performance gains and control cost in dynamic, unsteady maneuvers remains under-explored. This…
Flapping wings are the primary means by which dragonflies generate forces, but they are susceptible to damage due to their inherent fragility. The damage results in a reduction in wing area and a distortion of the original wing, which in…
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…
We designed and built a three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) flapping wing robot, Flapperoo, to study the aerodynamic benefits of wing folding and twisting. Forces and moments of this physical model are measured in wind tunnel tests over a…
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,…
Aerodynamic ground effect in flapping-wing insect flight is of importance to comparative morphologies and of interest to the micro-air-vehicle (MAV) community. Recent studies, however, show apparently contradictory results of either some…
Existing research has yet to reach a consensus on whether and how small flying animals utilize elastic energy storage mechanisms to reduce flight energy expenditure, and there is a lack of systematic and universal methods for assessment. To…
Drawing inspiration from the adaptive wing shape of birds in flight, this study introduces a bio-inspired concept for shape adaptation utilizing bend-twist coupling (BTC) in composite laminates. The primary aim of the design optimization is…
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.…
Bipedal animals have diverse morphologies and advanced locomotion abilities. Terrestrial birds, in particular, display agile, efficient, and robust running motion, in which they exploit the interplay between the body segment masses and…
The smallest flying insects often have bristled wings resembling feathers or combs. We combined experiments and three-dimensional numerical simulations to investigate the trade-off between wing weight and drag generation. In experiments of…
Thermal soaring enables birds to perform cost-efficient flights during foraging or migration trips. Yet, although all soaring birds exploit vertical winds effectively, this group contains species that vary strongly in their morphologies.…
Like a rocket being propelled into space, evolution has engineered flies to launch into adulthood via multiple stages. Flies develop and deploy two distinct bodies, linked by the transformative process of metamorphosis. The fly larva is a…
Flying insects are thought to achieve energy-efficient flapping flight by storing and releasing elastic energy in their muscles, tendons, and thorax. However, flight systems consisting elastic elements coupled to nonlinear, unsteady…
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…