Abstract
The hind wings of beetles are deployable and play an essential role in flight. In the Asian ladybird Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), the pterostigma (pst) is found in the middle of the hind wing instead of at the tip of the hind wing. This paper investigates the effect of the pst on the vibrational characteristics during the flight of H. axyridis. Based on cross sections of the pst and veins as well as the morphology and nanomechanical properties of the hind wing, including the wing membrane and veins, three three-dimensional coupling models, Models I–III, of hind wings with/without pst structures and veins with varying or uniform reduced moduli are established. Modal analysis results for these three models show that the vibrational characteristics and deformation tendencies change the flight performance of the hind wing models with pst structures compared with that of the other models. The results in this paper reveal that the pst structure has an important influence on vibrational characteristics and deformation tendencies and, hence, on flight performance; the relationships between the body mass and the area of the hind wing, which have significant implications for the design of biomimetic deployable wing structures for micro air vehicles (MAVs), are also analyzed.
Highlights
The hind wings of beetles are deployable and play an essential role in flight
The results show that the trend of variation in the area of the hind wing is almost consistent with the variation in the body mass of H. axyridis, and the corresponding polynomial fit of Y and M is as follows: Y = −48.39 + 6.20M − 0.20M2 + 2.23 × 10−3M3 + 4.90 × 10−19M4 where Y is the area of the hind wing and M is the body mass of H. axyridis
This paper considers the hind wing of H. axyridis, which is a deployable structure for which the effects of bending and twisting deformation on flight performance arise from the nanomechanical properties of varying reduced moduli of the veins and the presence of a pst structure
Summary
The hind wings of beetles are deployable and play an essential role in flight. In the Asian ladybird Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), the pterostigma (pst) is found in the middle of the hind wing instead of at the tip of the hind wing. Modal analysis results for these three models show that the vibrational characteristics and deformation tendencies change the flight performance of the hind wing models with pst structures compared with that of the other models. The results in this paper reveal that the pst structure has an important influence on vibrational characteristics and deformation tendencies and, on flight performance; the relationships between the body mass and the area of the hind wing, which have significant implications for the design of biomimetic deployable wing structures for micro air vehicles (MAVs), are analyzed. Harmonia axyridis is a lightweight insect whose deployable hind wing can fold to an area reduction ratio of 2 6,7. The folding mechanism of the hind wings of beetles can serve as useful inspiration for the design of deployable wings for MAVs with reduced sizes[5,7]. Analyses of the effects of hemolymph and the effects of the camber and stress stiffening of the membrane have always relied on an assumption of a uniform Young’s modulus of the veins[3,39,40]
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