Related papers: Flapping-pattern change in small and very small in…
Aeroelastic structures, from insect wings to wind turbine blades, experience transient unsteady aerodynamic loads that are coupled to their motion. Effective real-time control of flexible structures relies on accurate and efficient…
We investigate the effect of a light turbulent wind on a liquid surface, below the onset of wave generation. In that regime, the liquid surface is populated by small disorganised deformations elongated in the streamwise direction. Formally…
The design of micro air vehicles (MAVs) introduces aerodynamic performance challenges due to the small size and, consequently, the low Reynolds number 10000-100000. Natural fliers are naturally optimized and are comparable in size to MAVs,…
Plant sap-feeding insects must dispose of excess fluid, yet at millimeter scales droplet release is constrained by capillary adhesion and contact-line pinning. How phloem-feeding insects solve this puzzle, particularly as the excretory…
Unmanned micro aerial vehicle research is an active area of development due to the vast potential applications. Prior work towards realizing flapping flight has achieved some success however they have relied heavily upon the use of rotary…
We model the formation and evolution of wrinkles in a floating elastic sheet under uniaxial compression. This is a canonical setup in the study of wrinkling, and whilst its static equilibrium configuration is well characterised, its…
Axis switching of a jet ejected from a rectangular nozzle affects flow mixing characteristics. To elucidate such a mixing mechanism, the axis switching and vortex structure deformation should be investigated in detail. This study performed…
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…
Tiny flying insects, such as Drosophila melanogaster, fly by flapping their wings at frequencies faster than their brains are able to process. To do so, they rely on self-oscillation: dynamic instability, leading to emergent oscillation,…
Two populations of twisted magnetic field tubes, or flux ropes (hereafter, FRs), are detected by in situ measurements in the solar wind. While small FRs are crossed by the observing spacecraft within few hours, with a radius typically less…
Wrinkling, creasing and folding are frequent phenomena encountered in biological and man-made bilayers made by thin films bonded to thicker and softer substrates often containing fibers. Paradigmatic examples of the latter are the skin, the…
Wing-assisted inclined running (WAIR) observed in some young birds, is an attractive maneuver that can be extended to legged aerial systems. This study proposes a control method using a modified Variable Length Inverted Pendulum (VLIP) by…
We experimentally investigate the morphology and breakup of a droplet as it descends freely from a height and encounters an airstream. The size distributions of the child droplets are analysed using high-speed shadowgraphy and in-line…
Mushroom-shaped pillars have been extensively studied for their superior adhesive properties, often drawing inspiration from natural attachment systems observed in insects. Typically, pillars are modeled with linear elastic materials in the…
A small and light polystyrene ball is released without initial speed from a certain height above the floor. Then, it falls on air. The main responsible for the friction force against the movement is the wake of successive air vortices which…
High resolution direct numerical simulations of rotating and flapping bumblebee wings are presented and their aerodynamics is studied focusing on the role of leading edge vortices and the associated helicity production. We first study the…
Bio-inspired flapping wings have been extensively studied for their remarkable aerodynamic performance. Recently, their noise emission has attracted growing interest, but a careful analysis of scaling laws for their sound generation is…
Viscous droplets impinging on soft substrates may exhibit several distinct behaviours including repeated bouncing, wetting, and hovering, i.e., spreading and retracting after impact without bouncing back or wetting. We experimentally study…
Recently, there has been much interest in using lubricated flat and nano-/micro-structured surfaces to achieve extreme liquid-repellency: any foreign droplet immiscible with the underlying lubricant layer was shown to slide off at a small…
Aerodynamic force and flow structures of two airfoils in tandem configuration performing flapping motions are studied, using the method of solving the Navier-Stokes equations in moving overset grids. Three typical phase differences between…