Meeting Abstract
In this work, a combined experimental and computational study is conducted to study the aerodynamics and force enhancement strategies in cicada flight. Flapping wing kinematics including all motion complexity was reconstructed based on the output of a high-speed camera system. Following the reconstruction, three computational models, i.e., wing-body, wings-only and body-only model, were developed and evaluated using an immersed-boundary method based incompressible Navier-Stokes equations solver. The effects of wing-body interaction (WBI) on aerodynamic performance and vortex dynamics were investigated and discussed. Results showed that, due to the wing-body interactions, significantly better lift production is observed in the wing-body model. Further analysis of the associated near-field and far-field vortex structures also showed a formation of two distinct vortices shed from the thorax and the posterior of the insect, respectively. These three-dimensional vortex dynamics analyses are expected to provide physical insight into the understanding of the body-involved lift enhancement mechanism in flapping wing flights.
