Session G20: Bio: Wing effects on Insect flight

New Insights on Insect's Silent Flight. Part I: Vortex Dynamics and Wing Morphing

Insects are capable of conducting silent flights. This is attributed to its specially designed wing material properties for the control of vibration and surface morphing during the flapping flight. In current work, we focus on the roles of dynamic wing morphing on the unsteady vortex dynamics of a cicada in steady flight. A 3D image-based surface reconstruction method is used to obtain kinematical and morphological data of cicada wings from high-quality high-speed videos. The observed morphing wing kinematics is highly complex and a singular value decomposition method is used to decompose the wing motion to several dominant modes with distinct motion features. A high-fidelity immersed-boundary-based flow solver is then used to study the vortex dynamics in details. The results show that vortical structures closely relate to the morphing mode, which plays key role in the development and attachment of leading-edge vortex (LEV), thus helps the silent flapping of the cicada wings.   

The effect of butterfly scales on flight efficiency and leading edge vortex formation

It is hypothesized that the scales on a butterfly wing lead to increased flight efficiency. Recent testing of live butterflies tracked their motion over 246 flights for 11 different specimens. Results show a 37.8 percent mean decrease in flight efficiency and a flapping amplitude reduction of 6.7 percent once the scales were removed. This change could be largely a result of how the leading edge vortex (LEV) interacts with the wing. To simplify this complex flow problem, an experiment was designed to focus on the alteration of 2-D vortex development with a variation in surface patterning. Specifically, the secondary vorticity generated by the LEV interacting at the patterned surface was studied, as well as the subsequent effect on the LEV's growth rate and peak circulation. For this experiment butterfly inspired grooves were created using additive manufacturing and were attached to a flat plate with a chordwise orientation, thus increasing plate surface area. The vortex generated by the grooved plate was then compared to a smooth case as the plate translated vertically through a tow tank at Re $=$ 1500, 3000, and 6000. Using DPIV, the vortex formation was documented and a maximum vortex formation time of 4.22 was found based on the flat plate travel distance and chord length. Results indicate that the patterned surface slows down the growth of the vortex which corroborates the flight test results.   

Observations on Leading-Edge Vortex Development

Most of an insect's lift comes from the leading edge vortex (LEV) that they produce when flapping their wings.~ There are many variables that make a LEV either stronger or weaker such as: roughness from the scales on their wings, angle of attack (AoA) of wing, size of the wing, and speed of the wing during flapping motion.~ Experiments were conducted to study LEV development to gain a better understanding of butterfly flight and the importance of LEV formation. The variables emphasized in this particular experiment were the chord length Reynolds numbers.~ Two smooth plates of 4 inches and 7 inches were compared in this experiment with Re of 1500 and 3000. Matlab was used to track the LEV location and calculate the vorticity and circulation magnitudes. Differences in LEV vortex strength as a function of chord length will be presented.   

Roughness Effects on the Formation of a Leading Edge Vortex

Microscopic scales cover the wings of Monarch butterflies, creating a patterned surface. This patterning is an important natural flow control mechanism that is thought to delay the growth of the leading edge vortex (LEV) produced by the flapping motion of a wing. The increased skin friction caused by the scales leads to a weaker LEV being shed into the butterfly's wake, lessening drag and increasing flight efficiency. To test this theory, a plate of random roughness was designed in SolidWorks and printed on the Objet 30 Pro 3D printer. A 2x3x5 cubic foot$^{\mathrm{\thinspace }}$tow tank was used to test the rough plate at Reynold's numbers of 1500, 3000, and 6000 (velocities of 8, 16, and 32 mm/s) at an angle of attack of 45 degrees. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) captured images of the LEV generated by the plate when towed upwards through the particle-seeded flow. Codes written in MatLab were used to automatically track and determine the strength of the LEV. Circulation values for the randomly-rough plate were then compared to the same values generated in a previous experiment that used a smooth plate and a grooved plate to determine the effect of the patterning on vortex development.   

New insights into insect's silent flight. Part II: sound source and noise control

The flapping flight of aerial animals has excellent aerodynamic performance but meanwhile generates low noise. In this study, the unsteady flow and acoustic characteristics of the flapping wing are numerically investigated for three-dimensional (3D) models of Tibicen linnei cicada at free forward flight conditions. Single cicada wing is modelled as a membrane with prescribed motion reconstructed by Wan et al. (2015). The flow field and acoustic field around the flapping wing are solved with immersed-boundary-method based incompressible flow solver and linearized-perturbed-compressible-equations based acoustic solver. The 3D simulation allows examination of both directivity and frequency composition of the produced sound in a full space. The mechanism of sound generation of flapping wing is analyzed through correlations between acoustic signals and flow features. Along with a flexible wing model, a rigid wing model is also simulated. The results from these two cases will be compared to investigate the effects of wing flexibility on sound generation.   

Helical vortices generated by flapping wings of bumblebees

We analyze high resolution numerical simulation data of a bumblebee with fixed body and prescribed wing motion, flying in a numerical wind tunnel, presented in [Engels et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 116, 028103, 2016]. The inflow condition of the tunnel varies from unperturbed laminar to strongly turbulent. The flow generated by the flapping wings indicates the important role of the leading edge vortex (LEV), responsible for elevated lift production and which is not significantly altered by the inflow turbulence. The LEV has a conical structure due to the three-dimensional motion of the wings. This flow configuration produces strong vorticity on the sharp leading edge and the outwards velocity (from the root to the tip of the wing) in the spanwise direction. Flow visualizations show that the generated vortical structures are characterized by a strong helicity. We study the evolution of the mean helicity for each wing and analyze the impact of turbulent inflow.   

Effect of wing mass in free flight by a butterfly-like 3D flapping wing-body model

The effect of wing mass in free flight of a flapping wing is investigated by numerical simulations based on an immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method. We consider a butterfly-like 3D flapping wing-model consisting of two square wings with uniform mass density connected by a rod-shaped body. We simulate free flights of the wing-body model with various mass ratios of the wing to the whole of the model. As a result, it is found that the lift and thrust forces decrease as the mass ratio increases, since the body with a large mass ratio experiences large vertical and horizontal oscillations in one period and consequently the wing tip speed relatively decreases. In addition, we find the critical mass ratio between upward flight and downward flight for various Reynolds numbers.   

Aerodynamics of a comb-like plate mimicking a fairyfly wing

There have been many studies on the aerodynamics of a wing with smooth surface in a wide range of the Reynolds number. Unlike smooth wings of common insects or birds, however, fairyfly has a distinctive wing geometry; a frame with several bristles. Motivated by the peculiar wing geometry of the fairyfly we experimentally investigated the fluid dynamics of a translating comb-like wing in a wide range of Reynolds number in O(1) -- O(10\textasciicircum 3). We conducted the same experiment in several fluids of different viscosities in order to investigate the effects of the Reynolds number on the aerodynamic performance. Aerodynamic force of various wing shapes was measured, and it was correlated with the flow structure generated by the wing.   

A Numerical Investigation of Two-Different \textit{Drosophila} Forward Flight Modes

The parallel large-scale unstructured finite volume method based on an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation has been applied in order to investigate the near wake structure of \textit{Drosophila} in forward flight. DISTENE MeshGems-Hexa algorithm based on the octree method is used to generate the all hexahedral mesh for the wing-body combination. The mesh deformation algorithm is based on the indirect radial basis function (RBF) method at each time level while avoiding remeshing in order to enhance numerical robustness. The large-scale numerical simulations are carried out for a flapping \textit{Drosophila} in forward flight. In the first case, the wing tip-path plane is tilted forward to generate forward force. In the second case, paddling wing motion is used to generate the forward fore. The $\lambda_{2}$-criterion proposed by Jeong and Hussain (1995) is used for investigating the time variation of the Eulerian coherent structures in the near wake. The present simulations reveal highly detailed near wake topology for a hovering \textit{Drosophila}. This is very useful in terms of understanding physics in biological flights which can provide a very useful tool for designing bio-inspired MAVs.