Giant Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio cresphontes).
Photo by Bruce Walsh - Arizona Butterflies.
Forward flight of swallowtail butterfly with simple flapping motion
IOPSELECT
Author
Hiroto Tanaka 1 and Isao Shimoyama 2Affiliations
1 School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 60 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
2 Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656 Japan
E-mail
isao@i.u-tokyo.ac.jpJournal
Bioinspiration & Biomimetics Create an alert RSS this journalIssue
Volume 5, Number 2Citation
Hiroto Tanaka and Isao Shimoyama 2010 Bioinspir. Biomim. 5 026003
doi: 10.1088/1748-3182/5/2/026003
Abstract
Unlike other flying insects, the wing motion of swallowtail butterflies is basically limited to flapping because their fore wings partly overlap their hind wings, structurally restricting the feathering needed for active control of aerodynamic force. Hence, it can be hypothesized that the flight of swallowtail butterflies is realized with simple flapping, requiring little feedback control of the feathering angle. To verify this hypothesis, we fabricated an artificial butterfly mimicking the wing motion and wing shape of a swallowtail butterfly and analyzed its flights using images taken with a high-speed video camera. The results demonstrated that stable forward flight could be realized without active feathering or feedback control of the wing motion. During the flights, the artificial butterfly's body moved up and down passively in synchronization with the flapping, and the artificial butterfly followed an undulating flight trajectory like an actual swallowtail butterfly. Without feedback control of the wing motion, the body movement is directly affected by change of aerodynamic force due to the wing deformation; the degree of deformation was determined by the wing venation. Unlike a veinless wing, a mimic wing with veins generated a much higher lift coefficient during the flapping flight than in a steady flow due to the large body motion.PACS
87.19.rs Movement
47.63.M- Biopropulsion in water and air
47.85.Gj AerodynamicsSubjects
Fluid dynamics
Medical physics
Biological physicsDates
Issue 2 (June 2010)
Received 17 Fevereiro 2010 , accepted for publication 30 Abril 2010
Published 20 Maio 2010
Hiroto Tanaka 1 and Isao Shimoyama 2Affiliations
1 School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, 60 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
2 Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656 Japan
isao@i.u-tokyo.ac.jpJournal
Bioinspiration & Biomimetics Create an alert RSS this journalIssue
Volume 5, Number 2Citation
Hiroto Tanaka and Isao Shimoyama 2010 Bioinspir. Biomim. 5 026003
doi: 10.1088/1748-3182/5/2/026003
Abstract
Unlike other flying insects, the wing motion of swallowtail butterflies is basically limited to flapping because their fore wings partly overlap their hind wings, structurally restricting the feathering needed for active control of aerodynamic force. Hence, it can be hypothesized that the flight of swallowtail butterflies is realized with simple flapping, requiring little feedback control of the feathering angle. To verify this hypothesis, we fabricated an artificial butterfly mimicking the wing motion and wing shape of a swallowtail butterfly and analyzed its flights using images taken with a high-speed video camera. The results demonstrated that stable forward flight could be realized without active feathering or feedback control of the wing motion. During the flights, the artificial butterfly's body moved up and down passively in synchronization with the flapping, and the artificial butterfly followed an undulating flight trajectory like an actual swallowtail butterfly. Without feedback control of the wing motion, the body movement is directly affected by change of aerodynamic force due to the wing deformation; the degree of deformation was determined by the wing venation. Unlike a veinless wing, a mimic wing with veins generated a much higher lift coefficient during the flapping flight than in a steady flow due to the large body motion.PACS
87.19.rs Movement
47.63.M- Biopropulsion in water and air
47.85.Gj AerodynamicsSubjects
Fluid dynamics
Medical physics
Biological physicsDates
Issue 2 (June 2010)
Received 17 Fevereiro 2010 , accepted for publication 30 Abril 2010
Published 20 Maio 2010
+++++
