Passive maintenance of high angle of attack and its lift generation during flapping translation in crane fly wing
- 1 December 2009
- journal article
- Published by The Company of Biologists in Journal of Experimental Biology
- Vol. 212 (23), 3882-3891
- https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.030684
Abstract
SUMMARY We have studied the passive maintenance of high angle of attack and its lift generation during the crane fly's flapping translation using a dynamically scaled model. Since the wing and the surrounding fluid interact with each other, the dynamic similarity between the model flight and actual insect flight was measured using not only the non-dimensional numbers for the fluid (the Reynolds and Strouhal numbers) but also those for the fluid—structure interaction (the mass and Cauchy numbers). A difference was observed between the mass number of the model and that of the actual insect because of the limitation of available solid materials. However, the dynamic similarity during the flapping translation was not much affected by the mass number since the inertial force during the flapping translation is not dominant because of the small acceleration. In our model flight, a high angle of attack of the wing was maintained passively during the flapping translation and the wing generated sufficient lift force to support the insect weight. The mechanism of the maintenance is the equilibrium between the elastic reaction force resulting from the wing torsion and the fluid dynamic pressure. Our model wing rotated quickly at the stroke reversal in spite of the reduced inertial effect of the wing mass compared with that of the actual insect. This result could be explained by the added mass from the surrounding fluid. Our results suggest that the pitching motion can be passive in the crane fly's flapping flight.Keywords
This publication has 23 references indexed in Scilit:
- A two-dimensional computational study on the fluid–structure interaction cause of wing pitch changes in dipteran flapping flightJournal of Experimental Biology, 2009
- Influence of flexibility on the aerodynamic performance of a hovering wingJournal of Experimental Biology, 2009
- Photogrammetric reconstruction of high-resolution surface topographies and deformable wing kinematics of tethered locusts and free-flying hoverfliesJournal of The Royal Society Interface, 2008
- Wing kinematics measurement and aerodynamics of hovering dronefliesJournal of Experimental Biology, 2008
- Effects of unsteady deformation of flapping wing on its aerodynamic forcesApplied Mathematics and Mechanics, 2008
- Passive wing pitch reversal in insect flightJournal of Fluid Mechanics, 2007
- A computational fluid dynamics of `clap and fling' in the smallest insectsJournal of Experimental Biology, 2005
- Wing Rotation and the Aerodynamic Basis of Insect FlightScience, 1999
- The aerodynamics of hovering insect flight. II. Morphological parametersPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences, 1984
- The aerodynamics of hovering insect flight. III. KinematicsPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences, 1984