Global-Local Optimization of Flapping Kinematics in Hovering Flight

Ghommem, Mehdi; Hajj, Muhammad R.; Mook, Dean T.; Stanford, Bret; Beran, Philip S.; Watson, Layne T.

doi:10.1260/1756-8293.5.2.109

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…4), recapture energy lost to the wake. This phenomenon is usually referred as wake capture which is a well-established mechanism observed in hovering flights of insects and humming birds (14,46,47) . The wake shed behind a flapping wing contains energy provided to the surrounding fluid in the form of momentum and heat.…”

Section: Flapping Wings In Formation Flightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…UVLM has the capability to capture unsteady effects associated with the previously-shed wake vorticity, as well as wake-capture effects, both of which present important aerodynamic aspects in formation flights. Several research efforts have concluded favorably as to the appropriateness of UVLM for preliminary flapping wing design studies for cruise configurations where there is no flow separation nor substantial wing-wake interactions (32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39) . In a recent paper, Persson et al (38) showed through a detailed comparison between UVLM and higher-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations for flapping flight that the UVLM schemes produce accurate results for attached flow cases and even remain trend-relevant in the presence of flow separation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flapping wings in line formation flight: a computational analysis

Ghommem

Calo

2014

Aeronaut. j. (1968)

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The current understanding of the aerodynamics of birds in formation flights is mostly based on field observations. The interpretation of these observations is usually made using simplified aerodynamic models. Here, we investigate the aerodynamic aspects of formation flights. We use a potential flow solver based on the unsteady vortex lattice method (UVLM) to simulate the flow over flapping wings flying in grouping arrangements and in proximity of each other. UVLM has the capability to capture unsteady effects associated with the wake. We demonstrate the importance of properly capturing these effects to assess aerodynamic performance of flapping wings in formation flight. Simulations show that flying in line formation at adequate spacing enables significant increase in the lift and thrust and reduces power consumption. This is mainly due to the interaction between the trailing birds and the previously-shed wake vorticity from the leading bird. Moreover, enlarging the group of birds flying in formation further improves the aerodynamic performance for each bird in the flock. Therefore, birds get significant benefit of such organised patterns to minimise power consumption while traveling over long distances without stop and feeding. This justifies formation flight as being beneficial for bird evolution without regard to potential social benefits, such as, visual and communication factors for group protection and predator evasion.

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Section: Flapping Wings In Formation Flightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flapping wings in line formation flight: a computational analysis

Ghommem

Calo

2014

Aeronaut. j. (1968)

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“…The third group involves studies (e.g. Sane & Dickinson 2001;Berman & Wang 2007;Ghommem et al 2013;Zheng, Hedrick & Mittal 2013;Nakata, Liu & Bomphrey 2015) investigating optimal 3-D flapping-motion waveforms. Studies from the first group have been primarily inspired by fish-like propulsion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of flapping-motion profiles on insect-wing aerodynamics

et al. 2019

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“…12 Milano and Gharib 13 combined a GA with water towing tank experiments to identify the maximum average lift force. Ghommem et al 14 conducted kinematic optimization of a hovering flight to minimize the power consumption by linking two dimensional vortex lattice approach and the globallocal optimization methods. The above approaches are restricted by two-dimensional due to low computational efficiency resultant of stochastic analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimization of lift force for a bio-inspired flapping wing model in hovering flight

Zhang

Wen

Yang

2016

International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles

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The lift force is an important component that affects the aerodynamic performance of bio-inspired flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles. However, there is a lack of endeavors in the optimization of the flapping wing parameters that affect the lift force of micro aerial vehicles. This research is therefore to establish a methodology that combines computational fluid dynamic simulation for the evaluation of the lift generation and wing parameters. The Taguchi's framework for design of experiments, combined with the computational fluid dynamics simulations, is performed on a simplified robotic fly wing model used in the experiment found in Dickinson et al. (1999), under the hovering flight mode, to identify the most influential parameters on the lift generation of micro aerial vehicles. A commercial computational fluid dynamics code, ANSYS/FLUENT, along with a three-dimensional Navier-Stokes solver is used to simulate the unsteady flow field. With the optimization of the time-averaged lift force as the optimization objective, five typical parameters (flapping frequency, maximum angle of attacks during the upstroke and downstroke motions, stroke amplitude, and rotation type) in the flapping trajectory equation are selected as the input factors with each having four levels. Specific computational fluid dynamics cases are simulated in accordance with the chosen orthogonal arrays. By conducting statistical analyses with analyses of means and variance, the flapping frequency and the stroke amplitude are determined to be the two most influential parameters. The response surface of the time-averaged lift force and the power consumption contour are constructed with respect to these two parameters to determine the optimal combination for the generation of lift forces under a specific power constrain and provide a guideline for bio-inspired micro aerial vehicle designs.

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Global-Local Optimization of Flapping Kinematics in Hovering Flight

Cited by 10 publications

References 41 publications

Flapping wings in line formation flight: a computational analysis

Flapping wings in line formation flight: a computational analysis

Effects of flapping-motion profiles on insect-wing aerodynamics

Optimization of lift force for a bio-inspired flapping wing model in hovering flight

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