The effect of wing flexibility on aerodynamic force production has emerged as a central question in insect flight research. However, physical and computational models have yielded conflicting results regarding whether wing deformations enhance or diminish flight forces. By experimentally stiffening the wings of live bumblebees, we demonstrate that wing flexibility affects aerodynamic force prod...

Turbulent atmospheric conditions represent a challenge to stable flight in soaring birds, which are often seen to drop their wings in a transient motion that we call a tuck. Here, we investigate the mechanics, occurrence and causation of wing tucking in a captive steppe eagle Aquila nipalensis, using ground-based video and onboard inertial instrumentation. Statistical analysis of 2594 tucks, id...

This study presents an innovative design of a microtab system for aerodynamic load control on horizontal-axis wind-turbine rotors. Microtabs are small devices located near the trailing edge of the rotor blades and enable a rapid increase or decrease of the lift force through deployment of the tabs on the pressure or suction side of the airfoil, respectively. The new system has been designed to ...

On the basis of the traditional structure of noise barrier, this paper seeks aerodynamic load to reduce the variation of maximum surface configuration (porous structure). Using the numerical simulation method, this paper builds a three-dimensional numerical model of deloading type noise barriers and trains. The large fluid calculation software, Fluent, is adopted to conduct simulation calculati...

This paper presents a newly developed aero-servo-elastic platform for implementing smart rotor control and shows its effectiveness with aerodynamic loads on large-scale offshore wind turbines. The platform was built by improving the FAST/Aerodyn codes with the integration of an external deformable trailing edge flap controller in the Matlab/Simulink software. Smart rotor control was applied to ...

As aircraft wings become much more flexible due to the use of light-weight composites material, adverse aerodynamics at off-design performance can result from changes in wing shapes due to aeroelastic deflections. Increased drag, hence increased fuel burn, is a potential consequence. Without means for aeroelastic compensation, the benefit of weight reduction from the use of light-weight materia...

By using a combined analytical–computational methodology, a unified modelling of aerodynamic indicial functions covering the incompressible, subsonic compressible, transonic, and supersonic flight speed regimes is presented. The procedure is carried out in conjunction with a computational fluid dynamic analysis. For a plunging–pitching airfoil, selected unsteady aerodynamic load expressions hav...