Related papers: Passive wing deployment and retraction in beetles …
While engineers put lots of effort, resources, and time in building insect scale micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that fly like insects, insects themselves are the real masters of flight. What if we would use living insect as platform for MAV…
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…
Compared with fixed-wing flight, flapping flight can generate a higher lift and is also more maneuverable, largely resulting from the benefits of wing rotation. By analyzing the real wing kinematics of fruit flies, we found that the wing…
Saving energy and enhancing performance are secular preoccupations shared by both nature and human beings. In animal locomotion, flapping flyers or swimmers rely on the flexibility of their wings or body to passively increase their…
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…
Medium and large insects in normal hovering have horizontal, planar up- and downstrokes1-4. The lift of the two half-strokes, generated by the leading-edge vortex, provides the weight-supporting vertical force. But for small insects (wing…
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…
Hummingbirds and insects achieve outstanding flight performance by adapting their flapping motion to the flight requirements. Their wing kinematics can change from smooth flapping to highly dynamic waveforms, generating unsteady aerodynamic…
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…
Airborne insects generate a leading edge vortex when they flap their wings. This coherent vortex is a low pressure region that enhances the lift of flapping wings compared to fixed wings. Insect wings are thin membranes strengthened by a…
Tail bending associated with maneuvering flight of insects is a known phenomenon although there are only a few studies which analyze and quantify the effects and benefits of body configuration changes. We hypothesized that these…
Flying insects execute aerial maneuvers through subtle manipulations of their wing motions. Here, we measure the free flight kinematics of fruit flies and determine how they modulate their wing pitching to induce sharp turns. By analyzing…
In flapping flight, motion of the wings through the air generates the majority of the force and torque that controls the body motion. On the other hand, it is not clear how much effect the body motion imposes on the wings. We investigated…
Flight is a complicated task at small scales in part due to the ubiquitous unsteady air which contains it. Flying organisms deal with these difficulties using active and passive control mechanisms to steer their body motion. Body attitudes…
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…
Hovering insects are limited by their physiology and need to rotate their wings at the end of each back and forth motion to keep the wing's leading edge ahead of its trailing edge. The wing rotation at the end of each half-stroke pushes the…
Many kinds of adult Lepidoptera insects possess a long proboscis which is used to suck liquids and has the coiling and uncoiling movements. Although experiments revealed qualitatively that the coiling movement is governed by the hydraulic…
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…
In many insect species, the thoracic structure plays a crucial role in enabling flight. In the dipteran indirect flight mechanism, the thorax acts as a transmission link between the flight muscles and the wings, and it is often thought to…
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…