An analytic approach to theoretical modeling of highly unsteady viscous flow excited by wing flapping in small insects

Abstract

Numerous studies on the aerodynamics of insect wing flapping were carried out on different approaches of flight investigations, model experiments, and numerical simulations, but the theoretical modeling remains to be explored. In the present paper, an analytic approach is presented to model the flow interactions of wing flapping in air for small insects with the surrounding flow fields being highly unsteady and highly viscous. The model of wing flapping is a 2-D flat plate, which makes plunging and pitching oscillations as well as quick rotations reversing its positions of leading and trailing edges, respectively, during stroke reversals. It contains three simplified aerodynamic assumptions: (i) unsteady potential flow; (ii) discrete vortices shed from both leading and trailing edges of the wing; (iii) Kutta conditions applied at both edges. Then the problem is reduced to the solution of the unsteady Laplace equation, by using distributed singularities, i.e., sources/sinks, and vortices in the field. To validate the present physical model and analytic method proposed via benchmark examples, two elemental motions in wing flapping and a case of whole flapping cycles are analyzed, and the predicted results agree well with available experimental and numerical data. This verifies that the present analytical approach may give qualitatively correct and quantitatively reasonable results. Furthermore, the total fluid-dynamic force in the present method can be decomposed into three parts: one due to the added inertial (or mass) effect, the other and the third due to the induction of vortices shed from the leading-and the trailing-edge and their images respectively, and this helps to reveal the flow control mechanisms in insect wing flapping.