Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Concord Field Station, Bedford, MA 01730, USA.
Bioinspir Biomim. 2010 Dec;5(4):045005. doi: 10.1088/1748-3182/5/4/045005. Epub 2010 Nov 24.
Insect wings are compliant structures that experience deformations during flight. Such deformations have recently been shown to substantially affect induced flows, with appreciable consequences to flight forces. However, there are open questions related to the aerodynamic mechanisms underlying the performance benefits of wing deformation, as well as the extent to which such deformations are determined by the boundary conditions governing wing actuation together with mechanical properties of the wing itself. Here we explore aerodynamic performance parameters of compliant wings under periodic oscillations, subject to changes in phase between wing elevation and pitch, and magnitude and spatial pattern of wing flexural stiffness. We use a combination of computational structural mechanics models and a 2D computational fluid dynamics approach to ask how aerodynamic force production and control potential are affected by pitch/elevation phase and variations in wing flexural stiffness. Our results show that lift and thrust forces are highly sensitive to flexural stiffness distributions, with performance optima that lie in different phase regions. These results suggest a control strategy for both flying animals and engineering applications of micro-air vehicles.
昆虫翅膀是顺应结构，在飞行过程中会发生变形。最近的研究表明，这种变形会极大地影响诱导流，对飞行力产生明显的影响。然而，关于翅膀变形性能优势的气动机制以及这种变形在多大程度上取决于控制翅膀运动的边界条件以及翅膀本身的机械性能等问题，仍存在一些悬而未决的问题。在这里，我们研究了在周期性振荡下的顺应性机翼的空气动力学性能参数，研究了机翼升程和俯仰之间的相位变化、机翼弯曲刚度的幅度和空间模式对机翼的影响。我们使用计算结构力学模型和二维计算流体动力学方法相结合的方法，来研究气动升力和控制潜力如何受到俯仰/升程相位和机翼弯曲刚度变化的影响。研究结果表明，升力和推力对弯曲刚度分布非常敏感，性能最优的区域在不同的相位区域。这些结果为飞行动物和微型飞行器的工程应用提供了一种控制策略。
