Fluid-structure interaction modeling of insect flight (1st report, investigation of automatic wing rotation and lift force generation by two-dimensional numerical analysis)

Abstract

In this paper, a novel insect flight model based on fluid-structure interaction is proposed. Incorporating the high compliance of the wing base, which is observed in Diptera, the proposed model can express the automatic control of the wing rotation via fluid-structure interaction and can generate the adequate aerodynamic forces for the insect flight. The fluid-structure interaction is simulated by a monolithic method based on the finite element method. The result given by the proposed model is investigated by comparison with experimental results of the dynamically scaled model of the fruit fly given by Dickinson et al.