Abstract
This paper focuses on an experimental investigation aimed at evaluating the aerodynamics force characteristics of three-dimensional (3D) insect-like flapping motion in the vicinity of ground. The purpose is to establish whether flapping wing insects can derive aerodynamic benefit from ground effect similar to that experienced by a fixed wing aircraft. To evaluate this, force measurements were conducted in a large water tank using a 3D flapping mechanism capable of executing various insect flapping motions. Here, we focus on three types of flapping motions, namely simple harmonic flapping motion, hawkmoth-like hovering motion and fruitfly-like hovering motion, and two types of wing planforms (i.e. hawkmoth-like wing and fruitfly-like wing). Results show that hawkmoth-like wing executing simple harmonic flapping motion produces average lift to drag ratio [Formula: see text] similar to that of fruitfly wing executing the same motion. In both cases, they are relatively independent of the wing distance from the ground. On the other hand, a hawkmoth wing executing hawkmoth flapping motion produces [Formula: see text] characteristic different from that of fruitfly wing executing fruitfly motion. While the [Formula: see text] value of the former is a function of the wing distance from the ground, the latter is minimally affected by ground effect. Unlike fixed wing aerodynamics, all the flapping wing cases considered here do not show a monotonic increase in [Formula: see text] with decreasing wing distance from the ground.
Highlights
It is well known that flight performance of insects far exceeds those of conventional flyers in terms of the ability to hover, engage in abrupt changes of direction while in flight as well as to transit from translational to hovering mode and vice versa
Unlike fixed wing aerodynamics where CL increases and CD decreases with decreasing ground distance, here both CL and CD exhibit similar trend and this has resulted in lift to drag ratio ( CL / CD ) which is relatively independent of the ground distance for both the insect-like wings (see Fig. 5(c))
Four combinations of wing shape and flapping motion were studied, namely hawkmoth wing with hawkmoth motion; fruitfly wing with fruitfly motion, and hawkmoth wing and fruitfly wing with simple harmonic flapping motion
Summary
It is well known that flight performance of insects far exceeds those of conventional flyers in terms of the ability to hover, engage in abrupt changes of direction while in. The excellent flying capability of insects mainly originates from the complex wing flapping motion This mode of unsteady locomotion is different from that of a conventional aircraft wing where smooth and steady or quasi-steady flow is essential. These unique characteristics have attracted much interest from both academia and industry in flapping wing aerodynamics for the development of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs)[1,2,3,4,5]. Experimental Study of Ground Effect on 3D Insect-like Flapping Motion conducted a numerical study on the ground effect on the lift generation and efficiency that are more related to insect flight, but their calculations were restricted to a twodimensional flapping foil only
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