Related papers: Enhanced flight performance in non-uniformly flexi…
The aerodynamic influence of a wing-equipped motorcycle on a pursuing motorcycle presents critical implications for stability and performance. This study investigates the induced flow dynamics, characterized by a turbulent and complex wake…
The current study presents a systematic investigation of the locomotion performance of a swimmer with a wide range of parameter settings. Two-dimensional simulations with the immersed boundary method are employed for the fluid-structure…
Insect flight motors are extraordinary natural structures that operate efficiently at high frequencies. Structural resonance is thought to play a role in ensuring efficient motor operation, but the details of this role are elusive. While…
The transition of the vortex pattern and the lift generated by a heaving wing in a uniform flow was investigated numerically. Motivated by insects' flight maneuverability, we studied the relationship between a temporal change in the heaving…
Inspired by the natural motion of insects, fish, and other animals, flapping airfoils have gained significant importance due to their applications in fields such as ship propulsion, micro aerial vehicles, and autonomous underwater vehicles.…
This paper proposes a nonlinear control architecture for flexible aircraft simultaneous trajectory tracking and load alleviation. By exploiting the control redundancy, the gust and maneuver loads are alleviated without degrading the…
Wing articulation is critical for efficient flight of bird- and bat-sized animals. Inspired by the flight of $\textit{Cynopterus brachyotis}$, the lesser short-nosed fruit bat, we built a two-degree-of-freedom flapping wing platform with…
The presented investigation is motivated by the need to uncover connections between underlying rotor fluid-structure interactions and vortex dynamics to fatigue performance and characterization of flexible rotor blades, their hub, and their…
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…
This paper presents a data-driven optimal control policy for a micro flapping wing unmanned aerial vehicle. First, a set of optimal trajectories are computed off-line based on a geometric formulation of dynamics that captures the nonlinear…
A pinned-free beam in axial fluid flow, subjected to feedback-based actuation at the pinned end, is investigated. The actuation may be a moment or a prescribed angle and it is proportional to the state (curvature, slope, or displacement) of…
Ray-finned fish are able to adapt the curvature of their fins through musculature at the base of the fin. In this work we numerically investigate the effects of such leading-edge curvature actuation on the hydrodynamic performance of a…
We study the role of unsteady lift in the context of flapping wings in birds' flight. Both aerodynamicists and biologists attempt to address this subject, yet it seems that the contribution of the unsteady lift still holds many open…
In the fields of robotics and biomechanics, the integration of elastic elements such as springs and tendons in legged systems has long been recognized for enabling energy-efficient locomotion. Yet, a significant challenge persists:…
The wake of a flexible foil undergoing pitching oscillations in a low-speed hydrodynamic tunnel is used to examine the effect of chord-wise foil flexibility in the dynamical features of flapping-based propulsion. We compare the regime…
This study presents a novel spatially disrupted flow control system inspired by the covert feathers on bird wings. The system is a passive flow control system consisting of multiple feather-inspired flaps that dynamically interact with the…
The unsteady characteristics of the flow over thick flatback airfoils have been investigated by means of CFD calculations. Sandia airfoils which have 35% maximum thickness with three different trailing edge thicknesses were selected. The…
This paper addresses the boundary stabilization of a flexible wing model, both in bending and twisting displacements, under unsteady aerodynamic loads, and in presence of a store. The wing dynamics is captured by a distributed parameter…
We show how phasing between tandem bioinspired fins flapping at high-stroke amplitudes modulates rear fin thrust production and wake characteristics. Load cell thrust measurements show that the rear fin generates 25% more thrust than the…
The wing structure of several insects, including dragonflies, is not smooth, but corrugated; its vertical cross-section consists of a connected series of line segments. Some previous studies have reported that corrugated wings exhibit…