Meeting Abstract
The morphological and mechanical properties of insect wings have been studied extensively. However, experimental studies on fresh wings are challenging due to material degradation that occurs rapidly after the wing has been removed from the insect’s body. To overcome this challenge, we developed artificial wings that are dynamically similar with respect to real Manduca sexta forewings. The artificial wings are designed to be isospectral and isomodal to their biological counterparts, which implies they have identical frequency response functions (FRF) and vibration mode shapes and thus deform similarly when subjected to realistic flapping. To inform the artificial wings, we measured the FRF and vibration modes of fresh M. sexta forewings. Based upon our results, we constructed artificial wings using fused filament fabrication to print a PLA vein structure. We used thin polymer film to emulate the membrane, and the flat wings were molded to match natural curvatures. We determined that (1) the first and second vibration modes of real and artificial wings correspond to bending and torsional modes respectively, and (2) the FRF of real and artificial wings have similar magnitude at the first natural frequency whereas the response magnitude at the second natural frequency is nearly double for the artificial wing. Our results demonstrate the potential to construct artificial wings that behave like real insect wings while flapping.
