While the biological flyers often showcase high deformed wing structures, the effects of flexibility on the flapping wing aerodynamics remain inadequately understood. A major challenge in the study of flexible flapping wings is that the resulting wing motion is an outcome of a dynamic balance between the structural dynamics of the wing and the unsteady aerodynamics. Since the effective angle of...

Flapping flight is ubiquitous in Nature, yet cilia and flagella, not wings, prevail in the world of micro-organisms. This paper addresses this dichotomy. We investigate experimentally the dynamics of a wing, flapped up and down and free to move horizontally. The wing begins to move forward spontaneously as a critical frequency is exceeded, indicating that ‘flapping flight’ occurs as a symmetry-...

We examine the fluid-mechanical interactions that occur between arrays of flapping wings when operating in close proximity at a moderate Reynolds number (Re≈100-1000). Pairs of flapping wings are oscillated sinusoidally at frequency f, amplitude θ_{M}, phase offset ϕ, and wing separation distance D^{*}, and outflow speed v^{*} is measured. At a fixed separation distance, v^{*} is sensitive to b...

A flight-dynamics oriented simulation model of a flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) has been developed. This concept is based on flapping flight performed in nature by insects or hummingbirds. An optimization of the flapping kinematics of the wing has been led, in order to maximize the mean lift and thus the payload. A neural network has been designed to reproduce the function shape of the w...

the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of preslaughter shackling durations on some blood parameters, breast and thigh meat quality traits, and muscle metabolites in broilers. the effects of shackling were determined in a group of ross 308 broilers (240 birds) aged 42 days. four shackling treatments were used in experimental tests: shackling of broilers for 10 (group g10; as contro...

Flapping wing vehicles, or ornithopters, have proven difficult to control due to the unsteady flow generated by the high-speed flapping surfaces. To-date, research has focused on computational models from which fixed flapping strokes are optimized. These strokes are then fixed and executed open-loop in practice with flapping speed as the primary control output for climb and descent. This paper ...

Flying insects are able to navigate complex and highly dynamic environments, can rapidly change their flight speeds and directions, are robust to environmental disturbances, and are capable of long migratory flights. However, flying robots at similar scales have not yet demonstrated these characteristics autonomously. Recent advances in mesoscale manufacturing, novel actuation, control, and cus...

Neuroanatomical evidence argues for the presence of taste sensilla in Drosophila wings; however, the taste physiology of insect wings remains hypothetical, and a comprehensive link to mechanical functions, such as flight, wing flapping, and grooming, is lacking. Our data show that the sensilla of the Drosophila anterior wing margin respond to both sweet and bitter molecules through an increase ...

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...

Using a dynamically scaled robotic wing, we studied the aerodynamic torque generation of flapping wings during roll, pitch, and yaw rotations of the stroke plane. The total torque generated by a wing pair with symmetrical motions was previously known as flapping counter-torques (FCTs). For all three types of rotation, stroke-averaged FCTs act opposite to the directions of rotation and are colli...