Search

Smallest flying insects commonly have bristled wings and use novel aerodynamic mechanisms to provide flight forces, such as the fling mechanism. In the fling motion, the left and right wings are initially parallel to each other, and then the wings rotate around the trailing edge and “open” to form a V shape. Previous studies lacked the detailed flow around bristles, so the interaction mechanism of the two bristled wings in the fling motion was not well understood. In the present study, we obtained the detailed flow around each bristle numerically and revealed the interaction mechanism of two bristled wings. The results are as follows. During the fling, the vertical force of the bristled wings is similar to that of the corresponding flat-plate wings, but the drag of the bristled wings is much smaller. When the initial distance between wings is small, the opening drag of the bristled wings can be one order of magnitude smaller than that of the flat-plate wings. This is due to the different wing–wing interaction mechanisms of the two types of wings: for the flat-plate wings, during the fling motion, a “cavity” is created between the wings, producing a very large drag on the wings; for the bristled wings, there are gaps between the bristles and Stokes flows move through the gaps; thus, the cavity effect is much weaker. Very low “opening” drag may be one of the advantages of using bristled wings for the smallest insects.

Hovering insects require a rather large lift coefficient. Many insects hover with a large stroke amplitude (120°-170°), and it has been found that the high lift is mainly produced by the delayed-stall mechanism. However, some insects hover with a small stroke amplitude (e.g., 65°). The delayed-stall mechanism might not work for these insects because the wings travel only a very short distance in a stroke, and other aerodynamic mechanisms must be operating. Here we explore the aerodynamic mechanisms of a hoverfly hovering with an inclined stroke plane and a small stroke amplitude (65.6°). The Navier-Stokes equations are numerically solved to give the flows and forces and the theory of vorticity dynamics used to reveal the aerodynamic mechanisms. The majority of the weight-supporting vertical force is produced in the mid portion of the downstroke, a short period (about 26% of the stroke cycle) in which the vertical force coefficient is larger than 4. The force is produced using a new mechanism, the “paddlin...

We measure the wing kinematics and morphological parameters of seven freely hovering fruitflies and numerically compute the flows of the flapping wings. The computed mean lift approximately equals to the measured weight and the mean horizontal force is approximately zero, validating the computational model. Because of the very small relative velocity of the wing, the mean lift coefficient required to support the weight is rather large, around 1.8, and the Reynolds number of the wing is low, around 100. How such a large lift is produced at such a low Reynolds number is explained by combining the wing motion data, the computed vortical structures, and the theory of vorticity dynamics. It has been shown that two unsteady mechanisms are responsible for the high lift. One is referred as to “fast pitching-up rotation”: at the start of an up- or downstroke when the wing has very small speed, it fast pitches down to a small angle of attack, and then, when its speed is higher, it fast pitches up to the angle it normally uses. When the wing pitches up while moving forward, large vorticity is produced and sheds at the trailing edge, and vorticity of opposite sign is produced near the leading edge and on the upper surface, resulting in a large time rate of change of the first moment of vorticity (or fluid impulse), hence a large aerodynamic force. The other is the well known “delayed stall” mechanism: in the mid-portion of the up- or downstroke the wing moves at large angle of attack (about 45 deg) and the leading-edge-vortex (LEV) moves with the wing; thus, the vortex ring, formed by the LEV, the tip vortices, and the starting vortex, expands in size continuously, producing a large time rate of change of fluid impulse or a large aerodynamic force.

Corrugation gives an insect-wing the advantages of low mass, high stiffness, and low membrane stress. Researchers are interested to know if it is also advantageous aerodynamically. Previous works reported that corrugation enhanced the aerodynamic performance of wings at gliding flight. However, Reynolds numbers considered in these studies were higher than that of gliding insects. The present study showed that in the Reynolds number range of gliding insects, corrugation had negative aerodynamic effects. We studied aerodynamic effects of corrugation at gliding motion using the method of computational fluid dynamics, in the Reynolds number range of Re = 200–2400. Different corrugation patterns were considered. The effect of corrugation on aerodynamic performance was identified by comparing the aerodynamic forces between the corrugated and flat-plate wings, and the underlying flow mechanisms of the corrugation effects were revealed by analyzing the flow fields and surface pressure distributions. The findings are as follows: (1) the effect of corrugation is to decrease the lift, and change the drag only slightly (at 15°–25° angles of attack, lift is decreased by about 16%; at smaller angles of attack, the percentage of lift reduction is even larger because the lift is small). (2) Two mechanisms are responsible for the lift reduction. One is that the pleats at the lower surface of the corrugated wing produce relatively strong vortices, resulting in local low-pressure regions on the lower surface of the wing. The other is that corrugation near the leading edge pushes the leading-edge-separation layer slightly upwards and increases the size of the separation bubble above the upper surface, reducing the “suction pressure,” or increasing the pressure, on the upper surface.