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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…

Birds employ rapid pitch-up motions for different purposes: perching birds use this motion to decelerate and come to a complete stop while hunting birds, like bald eagles, employ it to catch prey and swiftly fly away. Motivated by these…

Birds have a remarkable ability to perform complex maneuvers at post-stall angles of attack. The passive deployment of self-actuating covert feathers in response to unsteady flow separation while performing such maneuvers provides a passive…

We present a control model for an octopus tentacle, based on the dynamics of an inextensible string with curvature constraints and curvature controls. We derive the equations of motion together with an appropriate set of boundary…

Jellyfish - majestic, energy efficient, and one of the oldest species that inhabits the oceans. It is perhaps the second item, their efficiency, that has captivated scientists for decades into investigating their locomotive behavior. Yet,…

Stationary take-off, without a running start or elevated descent, requires substantial aerodynamic forces to overcome weight, particularly for large birds such as geese exceeding 2 kg. However, the complex wing motion and…

Approximately half of the existing winged-insect species are of very small size (wing length about 0.3-4 mm); they are referred to as miniature insects. Yet until recently, much of what we know about the mechanics of insect flight was…

The mayfly nymph breathes under water through an oscillating array of wing-shaped tracheal gills. As the nymph grows, the kinematics of these gills change abruptly from rowing to flapping. The classical fluid dynamics approach to consider…

Aerodynamic shape optimization has established itself as a valuable tool in the engineering design process to achieve highly efficient results. A central aspect for such approaches is the mapping from the design parameters which encode the…

Reducing wake losses in wind farms by deflecting the wakes through turbine yawing has been shown to be a feasible wind farm controls approach. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of yawing depends not only on the degree of wake deflection but…

Animals and robots must right themselves after flipping over on the ground. The discoid cockroach pushes its wings against the ground in an attempt to dynamically self-right by a somersault. However, because this maneuver is strenuous, the…

Gliding saves much energy, and to make large distances using only this form of flight represents a great challenge for both birds and people. The solution is to make use of the so-called thermals, which are localized, warmer regions in the…

Bird migration is an adaptive behavior ultimately aiming at optimizing survival and reproductive success. We propose an optimal switching model to study bird migration, where birds' migration behaviors can be efficiently modeled as…

This study investigates the effects of porosity on flying creatures such as dragonflies, moths, hummingbirds, etc. wing and shows that pores can affect wing performance. These studies were performed by 3D porous flapping wing flow analyses…

Falling cat problem is well-known where cats show their super aerial reorientation capability and can land safely. For their robotic counterparts, a similar falling quadruped robot problem, has not been fully addressed, although achieving…

For centuries, soaring birds -- such as albatrosses and eagles -- have been mysterious and intriguing for biologists, physicists, aeronautical/control engineers, and applied mathematicians. These fascinating biological organisms have the…

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,…

Bioinspired flexible blades have been recently shown to significantly improve the versatility of horizontal-axis wind turbines, by widening their working range and increasing their efficiency. The aerodynamic and centrifugal forces bend the…

The wings of Lepidoptera contain a matrix of living cells whose function requires appropriate temperatures. However, given their small thermal capacity, wings can overheat rapidly in the sun. Here we analyze butterfly wings across a wide…

High-resolution numerical simulations of a tethered model bumblebee in forward flight are performed superimposing homogeneous isotropic turbulent fluctuations to the uniform inflow. Despite tremendous variation in turbulence intensity,…