Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are remarkable fliers that regularly carry heavy loads of nectar and pollen, supported by a flight system - the wings, thorax and flight muscles - that one might assume is optimized for aerial locomotion. However, honey bees also use this system to perform other crucial tasks that are unrelated to flight. When ventilating the nest, bees grip the surface of the comb o...

The development of flapping-wing micro air vehicles (MAVs) demands a systematic exploration of the available design space to identify ways in which the unsteady mechanisms governing flapping-wing flight can best be utilized for producing optimal thrust or maneuverability. Mimicking the wing kinematics of biological flight requires examining the potential effects of wing morphology on flight per...

A three-dimensional high-order unstructured dynamic grid based spectral difference (SD) Navier-Stokes (N-S) compressible flow solver with low Mach number preconditioning is used to investigate the effects of wing planforms on the aerodynamics performance of the thin finite-span flapping wings in this paper. Two types of wings, namely the rectangular and bio-inspired wings, are simulated and com...

Man's harvesting of photovoltaic energy requires the deployment of extensive arrays of solar panels. To improve both the gathering of thermal and photovoltaic energy from the sun we have examined the concept of biomimicry in white butterflies of the family Pieridae. We tested the hypothesis that the V-shaped posture of basking white butterflies mimics the V-trough concentrator which is designed...

The development of flapping-wing micro air vehicles (MAVs) demands a systematic exploration of the available design space to identify ways in which the unsteady mechanisms governing flapping-wing flight can best be utilized for producing optimal thrust or maneuverability. Mimicking the wing kinematics of biological flight requires examining the potential effects of wing morphology on flight per...

The development of flapping-wing micro air vehicles (MAVs) demands a systematic exploration of the available design space to identify ways in which the unsteady mechanisms governing flapping-wing flight can best be utilized for producing optimal thrust or maneuverability. Mimicking the wing kinematics of biological flight requires examining the potential effects of wing morphology on flight per...

The functional wing morphology of the wings of the scorpion fly Panorpa germanica L. was investigated using a combination of light microscopy, high-speed cinematography, wing manipulation and mechanical testing. In rising forward flight the wings are flapped 40° out of phase along a shallow stroke plane, the forewings leading. Aerodynamic analysis suggests that unsteady effects are important in...

This paper presents an extension ofWeissinger’s method and its use in analyzingmorphing wings. This method is shown to be ideal for preliminary analyses of these wings due to its speed and adaptability to many disparate wing geometries. It extends Prandtl’s lifting-line theory to planform wings of arbitrary curvature and chord distribution and nonideal airfoil cross sections. The problem formul...