Aerodynamic Force Generation in Hovering Flight in a Tiny Insect

Sun, Mao; Yu, Xin

doi:10.2514/1.17356

Cited by 96 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It was tested by measured unsteady aerodynamic forces on a flapping model fruit fly wing (Sun and Wu, 2003), on revolving model wings (Wu and Sun, 2004) and on a pair of wing in 'fling motion' (Sun and Yu, 2006). These tests showed that the unsteady aerodynamic forces computed by the present CFD code agreed well with the experimental measurements.…”

Section: Results and Discussion Code Validation And Grid Resolution Testsupporting

confidence: 65%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Aerodynamic effects of corrugation in flapping insect wings in hovering flight

Meng

Sun

2011

Journal of Experimental Biology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARYWe have examined the aerodynamic effects of corrugation in model insect wings that closely mimic the wing movements of hovering insects. Computational fluid dynamics were used with Reynolds numbers ranging from 35 to 3400, stroke amplitudes from 70 to 180deg and mid-stroke angles of incidence from 15 to 60deg. Various corrugated wing models were tested (care was taken to ensure that the corrugation introduced zero camber). The main results are as follows. At typical mid-stroke angles of incidence of hovering insects (35-50deg), the time courses of the lift, drag, pitching moment and aerodynamic power coefficients of the corrugated wings are very close to those of the flat-plate wing, and compared with the flat-plate wing, the corrugation changes (decreases) the mean lift by less than 5% and has almost no effect on the mean drag, the location of the center of pressure and the aerodynamic power required. A possible reason for the small aerodynamic effects of wing corrugation is that the wing operates at a large angle of incidence and the flow is separated: the large angle of incidence dominates the corrugation in determining the flow around the wing, and for separated flow, the flow is much less sensitive to wing shape variation. The present results show that for hovering insects, using a flat-plate wing to model the corrugated wing is a good approximation.

show abstract

Section: Results and Discussion Code Validation And Grid Resolution Testsupporting

confidence: 65%

“…Similar to our previous work (e.g. Sun and Tang, 2002;Sun and Yu, 2006), Eqns3 and 4 are solved using an algorithm based on the method of artificial compressibility. The algorithm was developed by Rogers and Kwak (Rogers and Kwak, 1990) and Rogers et al (Rogers et al, 1991) and is outlined below.…”

Section: The Flow Equations and The Solution Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerodynamic effects of corrugation in flapping insect wings in hovering flight

Meng

Sun

2011

Journal of Experimental Biology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…motion (Sun and Yu, 2006); Aono and colleagues showed that the interaction between wing and body was negligibly small: the aerodynamic force of the case with the body-wing interaction differs by less than 2% from that without body-wing interaction (Aono et al, 2008). Therefore, the above assumptions are reasonable.…”

Section: Fluid Dynamics Equationsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The code used for the flow computation was tested by Wu and Sun (Wu and Sun, 2004) using experimental data of flapping and rotating model insect wings; and recently, it was further tested by Sun and Yu (Sun and Yu, 2006) using experimental data for a flinging wing pair.…”

Section: Test Of the Equations Of Motion And The Computation Codesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hovering of model insects: simulation by coupling equations of motion with Navier–Stokes equations

Zhang

Sun

2009

Journal of Experimental Biology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARYWhen an insect hovers, the centre of mass of its body oscillates around a point in the air and its body angle oscillates around a mean value, because of the periodically varying aerodynamic and inertial forces of the flapping wings. In the present paper, hover flight including body oscillations is simulated by coupling the equations of motion with the Navier-Stokes equations. The equations are solved numerically; periodical solutions representing the hover flight are obtained by the shooting method. Two model insects are considered, a dronefly and a hawkmoth; the former has relatively high wingbeat frequency (n) and small wing mass to body mass ratio, whilst the latter has relatively low wingbeat frequency and large wing mass to body mass ratio. 2 and the other (due to wing inertial force) is proportional to wing mass to body mass ratio. For many insects, the values of 1/cn 2 and wing mass to body mass ratio are much smaller than those of the hawkmoth, and the effects of body oscillation would be rather small; thus it is reasonable to neglect the body oscillations in studying their aerodynamics.

show abstract

“…After this study, Lehmann et al [5], Sun and Yu [6], Miller and Peskin [7,8], Gillebaart et al [9] and Arora et al [10] conducted experimental and numerical research on this mechanism, which could enhance lift generation at low Reynold number.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Investigation on Lift Force Generation Mechanism of Clap and Fling Motion Using Unstructured ALE Method

Cao¹,

Xiahui²,

Yong³

2017

dtetr

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To study the lift generation mechanism and energy expenditure of clap and fling motion for insect flight, an unstructured mesh finite volume ALE method is developed. To solve mesh deformation problems during clap and fling motion, we adopt two mesh modification techniques. A 2D elliptical wing model is used to validate our solver by comparing the solutions to the already published numerical and experimental results. We analyzed the lift generation mechanism of clap and fling motion. The paper also released the comparison of Cl and energy expenditure between the single wing hovering motion and clap & fling. Conclusions have been made: the wake capture and delayed stall contribute to the lift generation while the rapid pitch mechanism decreases the lift. Clap and fling motion generate less lift but consume less energy, which means that it can generate more lift as consuming the same energy compared to single hovering motion by quantitative analysis.

show abstract

Aerodynamic Force Generation in Hovering Flight in a Tiny Insect

Cited by 96 publications

References 24 publications

Aerodynamic effects of corrugation in flapping insect wings in hovering flight

Aerodynamic effects of corrugation in flapping insect wings in hovering flight

Hovering of model insects: simulation by coupling equations of motion with Navier–Stokes equations

Numerical Investigation on Lift Force Generation Mechanism of Clap and Fling Motion Using Unstructured ALE Method

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About