Effect of body aerodynamics on the dynamic flight stability of the hawkmoth Manduca sexta

Abstract

This study explores the effects of the body aerodynamics on the dynamic flight stability of an insect at various different forward flight speeds. The insect model, whose morphological parameters are based on measurement data from the hawkmoth Manduca sexta, is treated as an open-loop six-degree-of-freedom dynamic system. The aerodynamic forces and moments acting on the insect are computed by an aerodynamic model that combines the unsteady panel method and the extended unsteady vortex-lattice method. The aerodynamic model is then coupled to a multi-body dynamic code to solve the system of motion equations. First, the trimmed flight conditions of insect models with and without consideration of the body aerodynamics are obtained using a trim search algorithm. Subsequently, the effects of the body aerodynamics on the dynamic flight stability are analysed through modal structures, i.e., eigenvalues and eigenvectors in this case, which are based on linearized equations of motion. The solutions from the nonlinear and linearized equations of motion due to gust disturbances are obtained, and the effects of the body aerodynamics are also investigated through these solutions. The results showed the important effect of the body aerodynamics at high-speed forward flight (in this paper at 4.0 and 5.0 m s−1) and the movement trends of eigenvalues when the body aerodynamics is included.