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Gliding flight is commonly accepted to be a valuable energy-saving mechanism used by natural flyers. In this work, In this work, the gliding flight of a damselfly undergoing was filmed in a large flight enclosure by using three orthogonally arranged and synchronized highspeed cameras. Using a 3D subdivision surface reconstruction methodology, the damselfly’s wing deformation and kinematics were modeled and reconstructed from the high-speed videos. An immersed-boundary-method-based Navier-Strokes equation solver is then employed to compute the aerodynamic performance of damselfly in gliding flight. A comparison between the aerodynamics of solitary wings and the fore-hind wing system suggests that wing-wing interactions can reduce the drag of the forewing and improve its gliding performance. Three Euler angles are employed to define the orientation of the wings in gliding. Parametric studies on these angles are implemented to obtain the optimal orientation of the wings in gliding flight. It is found that the wings with the orientation directly obtained from the experiments achieve the optimal gliding performance among all cases. In addition, vortex structures and surface pressure are also compared and analyzed to better understand the gliding aerodynamics, which can be used for the flight control of flapping wing micro air vehicles.
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Role of Active Morphing in the Aerodynamic Performance of Flapping Wings in Formation Flight
Migratory birds have the ability to save energy during flight by arranging themselves in a V-formation. This arrangement enables an increase in the overall efficiency of the group because the wake vortices shed by each of the birds provide additional lift and thrust to every member. Therefore, the aerodynamic advantages of such a flight arrangement can be exploited in the design process of micro air vehicles. One significant difference when comparing the anatomy of birds to the design of most micro air vehicles is that bird wings are not completely rigid. Birds have the ability to actively morph their wings during the flapping cycle. Given these aspects of avian flight, the objective of this work is to incorporate active bending and torsion into multiple pairs of flapping wings arranged in a V-formation and to investigate their aerodynamic behavior using the unsteady vortex lattice method. To do so, the first two bending and torsional mode shapes of a cantilever beam are considered and the aerodynamic characteristics of morphed wings for a range of V-formation angles, while changing the group size in order to determine the optimal configuration that results in maximum propulsive efficiency, are examined. The aerodynamic simulator incorporating the prescribed morphing is qualitatively verified using experimental data taken from trained kestrel flights. The simulation results demonstrate that coupled bending and twisting of the first mode shape yields the highest propulsive efficiency over a range of formation angles. Furthermore, the optimal configuration in terms of propulsive efficiency is found to be a five-body V-formation incorporating coupled bending and twisting of the first mode at a formation angle of 140 degrees. These results indicate the potential improvement in the aerodynamic performance of the formation flight when introducing active morphing and bioinspiration.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1757207
- PAR ID:
- 10422082
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Drones
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2504-446X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 90
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/drones5030090
