Simulation and visualization of air flow around bat wings during flight

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of interdisciplinary collaboration in building a set of tools to simulate and visualize airflow around bat wings during flight. A motion capture system is used to generate 3D coordinates of infrared markers attached to the wings of a bat flying in a wind tunnel. Marker positions that cannot be determined due to high wing deformation are reconstructed on the basis of the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The geometry obtained for the wings is used to generate a sequence of unstructured tetrahedral meshes. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation are solved using the hybrid spectral/hp element solver Nektar. Preliminary simulation results are visualized in the CAVE, an immersive, 3D, stereo display environment. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.