March 10(Thursday) Gordon Berman(Physics, Cornell)
Kinematics, Power, and Optimization in Hovering Insect Flight
Abstract:
Insects are some
of the world's most graceful, efficient, and varied
locomotors -- flying, darting, and hovering with an ease that is the envy of
aerospace and mechanical engineers. Despite this fact (or, more likely,
because of it), the physical mechanism behind their abilities is still
poorly understood. In this talk, I will present a relatively simple model
of aerodynamic forces on an insect wing that can be used to analyze the
force production during hovering flight. Due to the small computational
cost associated with this model, it is possible to run sensitivity analyses
and optimization procedures that were previously inaccessible to studies of
hovering flight. The ultimate goal is to optimize the flight kinematics for
a given insect morphology with respect to metabolic cost and to observe
whether or not insects flap their wings in a way that minimizes this cost.
Preliminary results to this effect will be presented.