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Researchers are one step closer to creating a micro-aircraft that flies with the manoeuvrability and energy efficiency of an insect after decoding the aerodynamic secrets of insect flight.
Dr John Young, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, and a team of animal flight researchers from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, used high-speed digital video cameras to film locusts in action in a wind tunnel, capturing how the shape of a locust's wing changes in flight. They used that information to create a computer model which recreates the airflow and thrust generated by the complex flapping movement.
The breakthrough result, published in the journal Science this week, means engineers understand for the first time the aerodynamic secrets of one of Nature's most efficient flyers information vital to the creation of miniature robot flyers for use in situations such as search and rescue, military applications and inspecting hazardous environments.
"The so-called `bumblebee paradox' claiming that insects defy the laws of aerodynamics, is dead. Modern aerodynamics really can accurately model insect flight," said Dr Young, a lecturer in the School of Aerospace, Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA).
"Biological systems have been optimised through evolutionary pressures over millions of years, and offer many examples of performance that far outstrips what we can achieve artificially.
"An insect's delicately structured wings, with their twists and curves, and ridged and wrinkled surfaces, are about as far away as you can get from the streamlined wing of an aircraft," Dr Young said.
"Until very recently it hasn't been possible to measure the actual shape of an insect's wings in flight partly because their wings flap so fast, and partly because their shape is so complicated.
"Locusts are an interesting insect for engineers to st
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| Contact: Peter Trute p.trute@unsw.edu.au 61-293-851-933 University of New South Wales Source:Eurekalert |
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