Aerodynamics of Insect Flight In TurbulentFlow

昆虫在湍流中飞行的空气动力学

• 批准号: 284179552
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Fritz-Olaf Lehmann
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Centre de Mathématiques et dInformatique
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2014-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/284179552?language=en
• 关键词: Aerodynamics; Insect; Flight; TurbulentFlow

The aerodynamics of insect flight currently receives high attention. The fundamentals of insect flight were first explored assuming that insects move in quiescent air. However, natural environment is typically turbulent, but we know very little on how insects manage to fly on windy days. For man-made micro air vehicles it is likewise important to fly under difficult flow conditions. This project proposes to investigate the interaction of insects with turbulence from complementary perspectives of experimental biology and computational fluid dynamics. We will define a set of model turbulent flows with reproducible statistical properties, varying systematically the energy content of the scales of turbulent motion, with similar flow conditions in experiments and numerical simulations. We also put a major emphasis on the significance of wing elasticity, and devise a suitable flexible wing model that closely mimics the elastic properties of real wings, which we measure in an experimental facility. Biological experiments account for the whole complexity of animals, including the brain, sensory system and the resulting changes in the wing-beat kinematics under perturbed flight conditions. Numerical simulations allow studying isolated effects and thus to reduce the problem's complexity. We combine biological experiments on tethered and freely flying insects on the one hand, and numerical simulations of model insects with rigid and flexible wings in tethered and free flight in a similar turbulent flow environment on the other hand. This allows giving at least partial answers to the three major questions we consider: (i) What are impacts, benefits and limitations of environmental turbulence on the aerodynamics of flapping insect flight? (ii) How does turbulence affect the energetic cost of flapping flight with flexible and rigid wings? (iii) What behavioral strategies do insects employ to cope with turbulent perturbations? These questions are relevant for both fundamental and applied research, and their interdisciplinary nature requires employing several perspectives.

目前，昆虫飞行的空气动力学受到了极大的关注。假设昆虫在静止的空气中移动，首先探索了昆虫飞行的基本面。但是，自然环境通常是动荡的，但我们对昆虫在大风天的飞行方式的了解很少。对于人造的微型空气车，在困难的流动条件下飞行也很重要。该项目提议从实验生物学和计算流体动力学的互补角度研究昆虫与湍流的相互作用。我们将定义一组具有可再现统计特性的模型湍流，系统地改变了湍流运动尺度的能量含量，在实验和数值模拟中具有相似的流量条件。我们还将重点放在机翼弹性的重要性上，并设计了一个合适的弹性机翼模型，该模型紧密模仿了真实机翼的弹性特性，我们在实验设施中测量了真实的机翼。生物学实验解释了动物的整个复杂性，包括大脑，感觉系统以及在扰动的飞行条件下的机翼束运动学变化。数值模拟允许研究孤立效应，从而降低问题的复杂性。我们一方面将生物学实验结合在束缚和自由飞行的昆虫上，另一方面，模型昆虫的数值模拟在类似的湍流环境中固定和柔性的翅膀与固定和柔性的翅膀结合在一起。这允许至少对我们考虑的三个主要问题给出至少部分答案：（i）环境湍流对拍打昆虫飞行的空气动力学的影响，好处和局限性？ （ii）湍流如何用柔性和僵硬的翅膀影响飞行飞行的能量成本？ （iii）昆虫采用哪些行为策略来应对湍流扰动？这些问题与基础研究和应用研究都相关，它们的跨学科性质需要采用几种观点。