Phasing of dragonfly wings can improve aerodynamic efficiency by removing swirl

Dragonflies are dramatic, successful aerial predators, notable for their flight agility and endurance. Further, they are highly capable of low-speed, hovering and even backwards flight. While insects have repeatedly modified or reduced one pair of wings, or mechanically coupled their fore and hind wings, dragonflies and damselflies have maintained their distinctive, independently controllable, four-winged form for over 300Myr. Despite efforts at understanding the implications of flapping flight with two pairs of wings, previous studies have generally painted a rather disappointing picture: interaction between fore and hind wings reduces the lift compared with two pairs of wings operating in isolation. Here, we demonstrate with a mechanical model dragonfly that, despite presenting no advantage in terms of lift, flying with two pairs of wings can be highly effective at improving aerodynamic efficiency. This is achieved by recovering energy from the wake wasted as swirl in a manner analogous to coaxial contra-rotating helicopter rotors. With the appropriate fore–hind wing phasing, aerodynamic power requirements can be reduced up to 22 per cent compared with a single pair of wings, indicating one advantage of four-winged flying that may apply to both dragonflies and, in the future, biomimetic micro air vehicles.     

Wrinkles enhance the diffuse reflection from the dragonfly Rhyothemis resplendens

The dorsal surfaces of the hindwings of the dragonfly Rhyothemis resplendens (Odonata: Libellulidae) reflect a deep blue from the multilayer structure in its wing membrane. The layers within this structure are not flat, but distinctly ‘wrinkled’, with a thickness of several hundred nanometres and interwrinkle crest distances of 5 µm and greater. A comparison between the backscattered light from R. resplendens and a similar, but un-‘wrinkled’ multilayer in the damselfly Matronoides cyaneipennis (Odonata: Calopterygidae) shows that the angle over which incident light is backscattered is increased by the wrinkling in the R. resplendens structure. Whereas the reflection from the flat multilayer of M. cyaneipennis is effectively specular, the reflection from the wrinkled R. resplendens multilayer spans 1.47 steradians (equivalent to ±40° for all azimuthal angles). This property enhances the visibility of the static wing over a broader angle range than is normally associated with a smooth multilayer, thereby markedly increasing its conspicuousness.     

Incompressible flow past oscillatory wings of low aspect ratio by the integral equations method

In the framework of the linearized perturbation theory, the pressure jump over the oscillating wing is the solution of a two‐dimensional integral equation. Performing an asymptotic expansion with respect to the aspect ratio and keeping the leading terms, we reduce the integral equation to a one‐dimensional one, obtaining a simplified method of solving the lifting surface integral equation for a class of thin wings of low aspect ratio with a straight trailing edge. The one‐dimensional integral equation is solved for the delta flat plate and the pressure coefficient field and the lift and moment coefficients are calculated. The range of validity of the new method is discussed in the final part of the paper. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Defects of steel units of the high-lift devices of aircraft wings caused by fretting corrosion

We study the defects of a flap actuator of the wing of an An-124 aircraft. The fractographic and metallographic investigations of the surface defects of a screw–nut friction couple are performed. A device for wear tests under the conditions of fretting corrosion is developed. Recommendations concerning the reduction of possible damage to flap actuators are proposed.     

Predicting power-optimal kinematics of avian wings

A theoretical model of avian flight is developed which simulates wing motion through a class of methods known as predictive simulation. This approach uses numerical optimization to predict power-optimal kinematics of avian wings in hover, cruise, climb and descent. The wing dynamics capture both aerodynamic and inertial loads. The model is used to simulate the flight of the pigeon, Columba livia, and the results are compared with previous experimental measurements. In cruise, the model unearths a vast range of kinematic modes that are capable of generating the required forces for flight. The most efficient mode uses a near-vertical stroke–plane and a flexed-wing upstroke, similar to kinematics recorded experimentally. In hover, the model predicts that the power-optimal mode uses an extended-wing upstroke, similar to hummingbirds. In flexing their wings, pigeons are predicted to consume 20% more power than if they kept their wings full extended, implying that the typical kinematics used by pigeons in hover are suboptimal. Predictions of climbing flight suggest that the most energy-efficient way to reach a given altitude is to climb as steeply as possible, subjected to the availability of power.     

Nonlinear stochastic stability analysis of wind turbine wings by Monte Carlo simulations

Wind turbines are increasing in magnitude without a proportional increase of stiffness, for which reason geometrical nonlinearities become increasingly important. In this paper the nonlinear equations of motion are analysed of a rotating Bernoulli–Euler beam including nonlinear geometrical and inertial contributions. A reduced two-degrees-of-freedom modal expansion is used specifying the modal coordinate of the fundamental blade and edgewise fixed base eigenmodes of the beam. The rotating beam is subjected to harmonic and narrow-banded support point motion from the nacelle displacement. It is shown that under harmonic excitation at certain combinations of eigenfrequencies, rotational frequency, amplitude and frequency of the support point motion, the nonlinear system may produce almost periodic response or even chaotic response. The strange attractor of this unstable behaviour is analysed under narrow-banded excitation, and it is shown that the qualitative behaviour of the strange attractor is very similar for the periodic and almost periodic responses, whereas the strange attractor for the chaotic case loses structure as the excitation becomes narrow-banded. Furthermore, the characteristic behaviour of the strange attractor is shown to be identifiable by the so-called information dimension. Due to the complexity of the coupled nonlinear structural system all analyses are carried out via Monte Carlo simulations.     

蝶翅精细分级结构纳米Ag-Au/蝶翅复合材料的可控制备

通过调控蝶翅的分步浸渍,在蝶翅模板上原位还原生成不同形状的纳米Ag-Au颗粒,并嵌入蝶翅精细分级结构得到纳米Ag-Au/蝶翅复合材料。在Ag-Au/蝶翅复合材料形成过程中,蝶翅既提供了构筑精细分级结构纳米复合材料的基体模板,又通过活性基团（如：—CONH—、—OH）参与控制Ag-Au颗粒的还原。因此,通过调控浸渍过程的温度和浸渍方式等工艺参数,得到30~50 nm的实心球状、50~80 nm空心球、不规则螺母形等不同形状的纳米Ag-Au粒子,这些纳米粒子原位沉积并均匀镶嵌在蝶翅基体上,不仅实现了对蝶翅的精细分级结构的复制,而且调控了所生成纳米Ag-Au粒子的形状。这种基于自然生物模板进行液相浸渍的制备方法为有效制备具有精细分级结构和多组分功能纳米结构的复合材料提供了重要借鉴方法。     

新型运输机机翼的颤振特性分析

应用高精度耦合计算方法,对带翼梢小翼和C型翼梢的运输机机翼颤振机理进行了研究.气动弹性模拟中,采用Euler方程描述非线性气动力,基于有限元方法获得结构响应.首先详细分析了基本机翼的颤振和极限环振荡(LCO),并与试验值进行比较.在此基础上进行带翼梢装置的机翼颤振特性计算,同时合理分离翼梢装置的质量和气动力作用.研究结...     

Aerodynamic effects of flexibility in flapping wings

Recent work on the aerodynamics of flapping flight reveals fundamental differences in the mechanisms of aerodynamic force generation between fixed and flapping wings. When fixed wings translate at high angles of attack, they periodically generate and shed leading and trailing edge vortices as reflected in their fluctuating aerodynamic force traces and associated flow visualization. In contrast, wings flapping at high angles of attack generate stable leading edge vorticity, which persists throughout the duration of the stroke and enhances mean aerodynamic forces. Here, we show that aerodynamic forces can be controlled by altering the trailing edge flexibility of a flapping wing. We used a dynamically scaled mechanical model of flapping flight (Re ≈ 2000) to measure the aerodynamic forces on flapping wings of variable flexural stiffness (EI). For low to medium angles of attack, as flexibility of the wing increases, its ability to generate aerodynamic forces decreases monotonically but its lift-to-drag ratios remain approximately constant. The instantaneous force traces reveal no major differences in the underlying modes of force generation for flexible and rigid wings, but the magnitude of force, the angle of net force vector and centre of pressure all vary systematically with wing flexibility. Even a rudimentary framework of wing veins is sufficient to restore the ability of flexible wings to generate forces at near-rigid values. Thus, the magnitude of force generation can be controlled by modulating the trailing edge flexibility and thereby controlling the magnitude of the leading edge vorticity. To characterize this, we have generated a detailed database of aerodynamic forces as a function of several variables including material properties, kinematics, aerodynamic forces and centre of pressure, which can also be used to help validate computational models of aeroelastic flapping wings. These experiments will also be useful for wing design for small robotic insects and, to a limited extent, in understanding the aerodynamics of flapping insect wings.     

High-speed photogrammetry system for measuring the kinematics of insect wings

We describe and characterize an experimental system to perform shape measurements on deformable objects using high-speed close-range photogrammetry. The eventual application is to extract the kinematics of several marked points on an insect wing during tethered and hovering flight. We investigate the performance of the system with a small number of views and determine an empirical relation between the mean pixel error of the optimization routine and the position error. Velocity and acceleration are calculated by numerical differencing, and their relation to the position errors is verified. For a field of view of approximately 40 mm x 40 mm, a rms accuracy of 30 mum in position, 150 mm/s in velocity, and 750 m/s2 in acceleration at 5000 frames/s is achieved. This accuracy is sufficient to measure the kinematics of hoverfly flight.     

Structural colours of nickel bioreplicas of butterfly wings

The two-angle conformally evaporated-film-by-rotation technique (TA-CEFR) was devised to coat the wings of the monarch butterfly with nickel in order to form a 500-nm thick bioreplica thereof. The bioreplica exhibits structural colours that are completely obscured in actual wings by pigmental colours. Thus, the TA-CEFR technique provides a way to replicate, study and exploit hidden morphologies of biological surfaces.     

A dynamic mesh strategy applied to the simulation of flapping wings

A robust and efficient dynamic grid strategy based on an overset grid coupled with mesh deformation technique is proposed for simulating unsteady flow of flapping wings undergoing large geometrical displacement. The dynamic grid method was implemented using a hierarchical unstructured overset grid locally coupled with a fast radial basis function (RBF)‐based mapping approach. The hierarchically organized overset grid allows transferring the grid resolution for multiple blocks and overlapping/embedding the meshes. The RBF‐based mapping approach is particularly highlighted in this paper in view of its considerable computational efficiency compared with conventional RBF evaluation. The performance of the proposed dynamic mesh strategy is demonstrated by three typical unsteady cases, including a rotating rectangular block in a fixed domain, a relative movement between self‐propelled fishes and the X‐wing type flapping‐wing micro air vehicle DelFly, which displays the clap‐and‐fling wing‐interaction phenomenon on both sides of the fuselage. Results show that the proposed method can be applied to the simulation of flapping wings with satisfactory efficiency and robustness. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonlinear control of earthquake excited high raised buildings by approximate disturbance decoupling

Summary This paper deals with a class of hybrid control systems for earthquake excited high raised buildings which consist of a passive base isolation and an additional active damper. The mechanical model of the building is a shear wall structure with nonlinear, hysteretic restoring forces. The differential geometric approach based on exterior differential systems is used to solve the disturbance decoupling problem for the mechanical model. Since the ideal controller is difficult to implement, a new control law is proposed. It solves the decoupling problem only approximately but its implementation is simple because only signals easy to measure are used. The stability is proved by means of the theory of Liapunov in combination with dissipative systems, and it turns out that the closed loop is robust with respect to all the variations of practical interest, too. Finally, computer simulations demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the discussed approach.Dedicated to Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Franz Ziegler on the occasion of his 60th birthday     

非均衡铺层壁板复合材料机翼气动弹性分析

对上下壁板采用非均衡铺层的大展弦比复合材料机翼进行了气动弹性分析。建立了不同掠角和壁板铺层非均衡程度的气动弹性模型 , 并考虑了壁板铺层非均衡程度的变化。分析了严重载荷情况下 , 机翼变形、 升力特性弹性修正等随壁板铺层非均衡程度的变化 , 并分析了固有振动特性和发散/颤振速度随壁板铺层非均衡程度的变化趋势 , 以期为进行这类结构的设计提供参考。研究结果表明 : 壁板铺层的非均衡程度对于所研究机翼的固有振动频率、 颤振速度影响较小 , 但对发散速度和机翼的静气动弹性性能影响较大。      

考虑发动机推力影响的机翼颤振分析

发动机安装在机翼上时,其推力具有典型的随动特征,并对机翼颤振产生重要影响.基于有限元分析软件MSC/Nastran的DMAP开发,提出了一种考虑发动机推力和几何非线性影响的机翼颤振分析方法.作为验证,分析了推力对某高空长航时飞行器机翼颤振速度的影响,与已有结果吻合良好.对一带有两个发动机的复杂机翼结构进行了结构建模和颤振分析,重点分析了推力大小及作用位置对颤振速度的影响.结果表明,发动机的推力效应在颤振分析中是不应忽略的.     

Low-speed aerodynamic characteristics of wings with sweep discontinuities

It has been shown that, using the concept of a discrete vortex filament shedding, Weissinger’s method can be modified to determine the span-wise loading for wings with a sweep discontinuity. The sweep discontinuity is modelled by the introduction of a discontinuity in the equivalent vortex pattern chosen to replace the wing. The total lift, induced drag, pitching moment coefficients and span-wise location of the centre of pressure have been found for a few wing geometries using De Young and Harper’s procedure. An increase in the outboard sweep shifts the maximum load position outboard besides decreasing the overall lift and induced drag coefficients. High suction peaks appear at the pivot.     

变体机翼大变形梯形蒙皮结构研究

首先介绍了变体机翼及蒙皮结构的发展研究现状,提出了大变形梯形蒙皮结构的构想.随后,建立了梯形蒙皮结构的力学分析数学模型,与有限元仿真分析结果进行了比较和分析,验证了所建立数学分析模型的正确性,为进一步开展制备和实验研究奠定了理论基础.     

Prolonging the plasma circulation of proteins by nano-encapsulation with phosphorylcholine-based polymer

Short in vivo circulation is a major hindrance to the widespread adoption of protein therapeutics.Protein nanocapsules generated by encapsulating proteins with a thin layer of phosphorylcholine-based polymer via a two-step encapsulation process exhibited significantly prolonged plasma half-life.Furthermore,by constructing nanocapsules with similar sizes but different surface charges and chemistry,we demonstrated a generic strategy for prolonging the plasma half-life of therapeutic proteins.In an in vitro experiment,four types of bovine serum albumin (BSA) nanocapsules were incubated with fetal bovine serum (FBS) in phosphate buffer saline (PBS);the cell uptake by HeLa cells was monitored to systematically evaluate the characteristics of the surface chemistry during drculation.Single positron emission tomography-computed tomography (SPECT)was employed to allow real-time observation of the BSA nanoparticle distribution in vivo,as well as quantification of the plasma concentration after intravenous administration.This study offers a practical method for translating a broad range of proteins for clinical use.     

考虑气动弹性约束的复合材料支撑机翼优化设计

基于遗传-敏度混合算法对复合材料支撑机翼开展考虑气动弹性约束的优化设计,并与常规机翼构型进行比较。在严重载荷状态下,以结构质量最小化为目标,以翼尖变形、屈曲稳定性和颤振速度为约束,设计复合材料机翼铺层和支撑结构参数,并研究不同支撑点位置对于优化设计结果的影响。结果表明,复合材料支撑机翼构型能大幅减少弯曲方向上的铺层材料,有明显的减重优势。支撑点位置对于结构质量、屈曲稳定性和扭转刚度分布有较大影响,支撑结构的屈曲破坏在复合材料支撑机翼的结构设计中要引起重视。