Up to now, the take-off stage has remained an elusive phase of insect flight that was relatively poorly explored compared with other maneuvers. An overall assessment of the different mechanisms involved in force production during take-off has never been explored. Focusing on the first downstroke, we have addressed this problem from a force balance perspective in butterflies taking off from the ...

Recent work on a novel approach to the control of the aerodynamic performance of lifting surfaces by fluidic modification of their apparent aerodynamic shape, or virtual aerosurface shaping is reviewed. This flow control approach emphasizes fluidic modification of the “apparent” aerodynamic shape of the surface with the objective of altering or prescribing the streamwise pressure gradient. Cont...

Reynolds number and thus body size may potentially limit aerodynamic force production in flying insects due to relative changes of viscous forces on the beating wings. By comparing four different species of fruit flies similar in shape but with different body mass, we have investigated how small insects cope with changes in fluid mechanical constraints on power requirements for flight and the e...

In the current study, twin wind blades are designed, fabricated and the effect of various gap ratio (g*) at various angle of attacks (α) on a next to each other twin wind blades are examined in an open-channel wind tunnel. Aerodynamic forces and moments are determined by using three-constraint force balancer. For gap ratio of zero, the aerodynamic attributes are like those of a solitary wind bl...

We describe and explain new advancements in the design of the aerodynamic force platform, a novel instrument that can directly measure the aerodynamic forces generated by freely flying animals and robots. Such in vivo recordings are essential to better understand the precise aerodynamic function of flapping wings in nature, which can critically inform the design of new bioinspired robots. By de...

A three-degrees of freedom (3-DOF) coupled numerical simulation technique for synchronously extracting 18 aerodynamic derivatives of bridge decks is proposed and evaluated in this study. Computations are performed with a finite volume unstructured computational flow dynamics (CFD) solver using two-dimensional (2D) hybrid meshes with fine near-wall resolution. The accuracy of the numerical model...

The effects of aerodynamic perturbation forces on the orbital life of low altitude Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are investigated, with a focus on the secular perturbations caused by lift and drag. The secular effects can be divided into the circularization of the orbit for both lift and drag perturbation forces, and the decrease of the orbit semimajor axis for drag perturbation. A study of ...

Effect of altitude is discussed in the unsteady separation of multi stage rockets. Axisymmetric, unsteady and turbulent Navier stokes equations are solved numerically. The governing equations are split into a hyperbolic inviscid part and a parabolic diffusion part. The hyperbolic part is solved by an explicit second-order time and space of Godunov-type scheme. Moving mesh and moving boundary al...