Wing Morphology and Inertial Properties of Bumblebees

Kolomenskiy, Dmitry; Ravi, Sridhar; Xu, Ru; Ueyama, Kohei; Jakobi, Timothy; Engels, Thomas; Nakata, T.; Sesterhenn, Jörn; Farge, Marie; Schneider, Kai; Onishi, Ryo; Líu, Hao

doi:10.5226/jabmech.8.41

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The body is also assumed rigid, therefore it is straightforward to relate the position of the shoulder points in the laboratory reference frame to the position of the center of mass and the three Euler angles of the body. The video sequence selected for the present analysis corresponds to the hovering flight #6 in [7]. The body moves very little during the entire video.…”

Section: Kinematic Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamics of Bumblebee Wing Pitching Rotation: Measurement and Modelling

Kolomenskiy¹,

Ravi²,

Xu³

et al. 2021

Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design

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HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de IUTAM Symposium on Critical flow dynamics involving moving/deformable structures with design applications,

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Section: Kinematic Reconstructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamics of Bumblebee Wing Pitching Rotation: Measurement and Modelling

Kolomenskiy¹,

Ravi²,

Xu³

et al. 2021

Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design

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“…With respect to the symmetric control of two wings, the velocity component v y and the angular velocities around x and z axes vanish accordingly. Note that the moment of inertia I yy is calculated under a uniform density assumption; the flapping-induced wing inertia force and torque are ignored with consideration that the wing mass is less than 0.2% of total body mass in bumblebee [27]. F x , F z and T y are obtained and updated from the NS solver; the flapping aerodynamics and body dynamics are coupled loosely with the equation of body solved in a manner of 4th order Runge-Kutta [25].…”

Section: Modeling Of Free Flight Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A wing-body model of bumblebee as shown in figure 2(a), is constructed based on our previous study [27], which has a body length (L) of 21.0 mm, a wing length of 15.2 mm, a mean wing-chord length of 4.1 mm, and a body mass, m of 391.0 mg. Based on the measurements of the wing kinematics of a hovering bumblebee with synchronized three high speed cameras [32], a kinematic model was built up to mimic the realistic wing-body kinematics of flapping flight, which as depicted in figures 2(b) and (c) is described by three angles with respect to the stroke plane: the stroke angle, the rotational angle in terms of geometric angle of attack of a wing, and the deviation angle. Morphological and kinematic parameters are summarized in table 1.…”

Section: Morphological and Kinematic Bumblebee Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intermittent control strategy can enhance stabilization robustness in bumblebee hovering

Nakata

Cai

et al. 2020

Bioinspir. Biomim.

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Active flight control plays a crucial role in stabilizing the body posture of insects to stay aloft under a complex natural environment. Insects can achieve a closed-loop flight control by integrating the external mechanical system and the internal working system through manipulating wing kinematics according to feedback information from multiple sensors. While studies of proportional derivative/proportional integral derivative-based algorithms are the main subject to explore the continuous flight control mechanisms associated with insect flights, it is normally observed that insects achieve an intermittent spike firing in steering muscles to manipulate wings in flight control discontinuously. Here we proposed a novel intermittent control strategy for a 3 degree of freedom (DoF) pitch-control and explored its stabilization robustness in bumblebee hovering. An integrated computational model was established and validated, which comprises an insect-inspired dynamic flight simulator and a novel discrete feedback controller as well as a simplified free-flight dynamic model. We found that the intermittent control model can achieve an angular-dominant flight control, whereas the continuous control model corresponds to an angular-velocity-dominant one. Given the biological constraints in sensorimotor neurobiology and musculoskeletal mechanics, the intermittent control strategy was examined capable of enhancing the stabilization robustness in terms of sensory latency, stroke derivation, spike interval, and damping strength. Our results indicate that the intermittent control strategy is likely a sophisticated flight control mechanism in insect flights while providing a bioinspired flight-control design for insect size flapping-wing micro air vehicles.

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Effects of wing-to-body mass ratio on insect flapping flights

Zhang

2021

Physics of Fluids

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Bio-flyers of insects, birds, and bats are observed to have a broad range of wing-to-body mass ratio (WBMR) from 0.1% to 15%. The WBMR and wing mass distribution can lead to large inertial forces and torques in fast-flapping wings, particularly in insect flights, comparable with or even greater than aerodynamic ones, which may greatly affect the aerodynamic performance, flight stability, and control, but still remain poorly understood. Here, we address a simulation-based study of the WBMR effects on insect flapping flights with a specific focus on unraveling whether some optimal WBMR exists in balancing the flapping aerodynamics and body control in terms of body pitch oscillation and power consumption. A versatile, integrated computational model of hovering flight that couples flapping-wing-and-body aerodynamics and three degree of freedom body dynamics was employed to analyze free-flight body dynamics, flapping aerodynamics, and power cost for three typical insects of a fruit fly, a bumblebee, and a hawkmoth over a wide range of Reynolds numbers (Re) and WBMRs. We found that the realistic WBMRs in the three insect models can suppress the body pitch oscillation to a minimized level at a very low cost of mechanical power. We further derived a scaling law to correlate the WBMR with flapping-wing kinematics of stroke amplitude (Φ), flapping frequency (f), and wing length (R) in terms of ΦRf2−1, which matches well with measurements and, thus, implies that the WBMR-based body pitch minimization may be a universal mechanism in hovering insects. The realistic WBMR likely offers a novel solution to resolve the trade-off between body-dynamics-based aerodynamic performance and power consumption. Our results indicate that the WBMR plays a crucial role in optimization of flapping-wing dynamics, which may be useful as novel morphological intelligence for the biomimetic design of insect- and bird-sized flapping micro-aerial vehicles.

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Wing Morphology and Inertial Properties of Bumblebees

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

The Dynamics of Bumblebee Wing Pitching Rotation: Measurement and Modelling

The Dynamics of Bumblebee Wing Pitching Rotation: Measurement and Modelling

Intermittent control strategy can enhance stabilization robustness in bumblebee hovering

Effects of wing-to-body mass ratio on insect flapping flights

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