This paper addresses the question, do the rotational forces in the hovering fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster reflect something different (the Magnus effect) or more of the same (circulatory-and-attached-vortex force)? The results of an unsteady blade-element model using empirically derived force coefficients from translating (root-oscillating) wings are compared with recent results derived fro...

The strange three-dimensional flight behaviour of slowly spinning soccer balls is one of the most interesting and unknown phenomenon associated with the trajectories of sports balls. Many spectators have experienced numerous exciting and emotional instances while observing the curious flight behaviour of these balls. We examine the aerodynamic mechanisms of erratic ball behaviours through real ...

A method to compute sensitivities for use in gradient-based shape optimization applied to unsteady aeroelasticity problems is presented. The method takes into account the coupling between all three fundamental aspects of computational aeroelasticity, namely, unsteady flow equations, time varying structural response to aerodynamic loads, and dynamic meshes that accommodate geometric deformations...

The unsteady viscous flow fields of a cross-flow fan are computed by time-accurately solving the two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the unstructured triangular mesh solver algorithms. Based on pressure fluctuation data acquired at the surfaces of 35 rotating blades and stabilizer, acoustic pressures are predicted by the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings equation. The aerodynamic...

We used a dynamically scaled mechanical model of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study how changes in wing kinematics influence the production of unsteady aerodynamic forces in insect flight. We examined 191 separate sets of kinematic patterns that differed with respect to stroke amplitude, angle of attack, flip timing, flip duration and the shape and magnitude of stroke deviation. Ins...

A method to efficiently generate a complete aerodynamic description for projectile flight dynamic modeling is described. At the core of the method is an unsteady, time accurate computational fluid dynamics simulation that is tightly coupled to a rigid body dynamics simulation. A set of n short time snippets of simulated projectile motion at m different Mach numbers is computed and employed as b...

An aerodynamic model for applications to external flows is formulated that provides a great tradeoff between computational cost and prediction accuracy. The novelty of the work ability deal with any unsteady flow problem, irrespective frequency motion kinematics. model, baptized FALCon, combines an in-house vortex lattice method infinite-swept wing Navier–Stokes solver. two specialized methods ...

In the analysis of flexible flapping wings of insects, the aerodynamic outcome depends on the combined structural dynamics and unsteady fluid physics. Because the wing shape and hence the resulting effective angle of attack are a priori unknown, predicting aerodynamic performance is challenging. Here, we show that a coupled aerodynamics/structural dynamics model can be established for hovering,...