High-resolution numerical simulations of a tethered model bumblebee in forward flight are perform... more High-resolution numerical simulations of a tethered model bumblebee in forward flight are performed superimposing homogeneous isotropic turbulent fluctuations to the uniform inflow. Despite tremendous variation in turbulence intensity, between 17% and 99% with respect to the mean flow, we do not find significant changes in cycle-averaged aerodynamic forces, moments, or flight power when averaged over realizations, compared to laminar inflow conditions. The variance of aerodynamic measures, however, significantly increases with increasing turbulence intensity, which may explain flight instabilities observed in freely flying bees.
Aerodynamic ground effect in flapping-wing insect flight is of importance to comparative morpholo... more Aerodynamic ground effect in flapping-wing insect flight is of importance to comparative morphologies and of interest to the micro-air-vehicle (MAV) community. Recent studies, however, show apparently contradictory results of either some significant extra lift or power savings, or zero ground effect. Here we present a numerical study of fruitfly sized insect takeoff with a specific focus on the significance of leg thrust and wing kinematics. Flapping-wing takeoff is studied using numerical modelling and high performance computing. The aerodynamic forces are calculated using a three-dimensional Navier–Stokes solver based on a pseudo-spectral method with volume penalization. It is coupled with a flight dynamics solver that accounts for the body weight, inertia and the leg thrust, while only having two degrees of freedom: the vertical and the longitudinal horizontal displacement. The natural voluntary takeoff of a fruitfly is considered as reference. The parameters of the model are then varied to explore possible effects of interaction between the flapping-wing model and the ground plane. These modified takeoffs include cases with decreased leg thrust parameter , and/or with periodic wing kinematics, constant body pitch angle. The results show that the ground effect during natural voluntary takeoff is negligible. In the modified takeoffs, when the rate of climb is slow, the difference in the aerodynamic forces due to the interaction with the ground is up to 6%. Surprisingly, depending on the kinematics, the difference is either positive or negative, in contrast to the intuition based on the helicopter theory, which suggests positive excess lift. This effect is attributed to unsteady wing-wake interactions. A similar effect is found during hovering.
We present a novel scheme for the numerical simulation of fluid-structure interaction problems. I... more We present a novel scheme for the numerical simulation of fluid-structure interaction problems. It extends the volume penalization method, a member of the family of immersed boundary methods, to take into account flexible obstacles. We show how the introduction of a smoothing layer, physically interpreted as surface roughness, allows for arbitrary motion of the deformable obstacle. The approach is carefully validated and good agreement with various results in the literature is found. A simple one-dimensional solid model is derived, capable of modeling arbitrarily large deformations and imposed motion at the leading edge, as it is required for the simulation of simplified models for insect flight. The model error is shown to be small, while the one-dimensional character of the model features a reasonably easy implementation. The coupled fluid–solid interaction solver is shown not to introduce artificial energy in the numerical coupling, and validated using a widely used benchmark. We conclude with the application of our method to models for insect flight and study the propulsive efficiency of one and two wing sections.
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Papers by Thomas Engels