Publication
Not gone with the wind: Active microscale flight with highly porous bristled wings
Related publications (16)
The effects of kinematics, flexibility, and planform on the vortex formation and aerodynamic performance of flapping wing flight
In this thesis, the aerodynamic challenges in flapping wing flight are addressed.In particular, the effects of different wing kinematics, flexibilities, and planforms on the the leading edge vortex development and aerodynamic performance are investigated.I ...
EPFL2023Fluid-structure interactions of bristled wings: the trade-off between weight and drag
Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Matteo Pezzulla, Yuexia Luna Lin
The smallest flying insects often have bristled wings resembling feathers or combs. We combined experiments and three-dimensional numerical simulations to investigate the trade-off between wing weight and drag generation. In experiments of bristled strips, ...
London2023Wing and tail morphing in birds and drones
To aid humans in civilian tasks, future drones will have to operate in large cities that abound with difficult flight conditions such as confined spaces, obstacles, and turbulent air. Such drones must cruise efficiently to cover vast distances fast and als ...
EPFL2023To tread or not to tread: comparison between water treading and conventional flapping wing kinematics
Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke, Swathi Badala Krishna
Hovering insects are limited by their physiology and need to rotate their wings at the end of each back-and-forth motion to keep the wing's leading edge ahead of its trailing edge. The wing rotation at the end of each half-stroke pushes the leading edge vo ...
IOP Publishing Ltd2022Aeroelastic characterisation of a bio-inspired flapping membrane wing
Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke, Esra Uksul, Jules Ange Philippe Richeux
Natural fliers like bats exploit the complex fluid-structure interaction between their flexible membrane wings and the air with great ease. Yet, replicating and scaling the balance between the structural and fluid-dynamical parameters of unsteady membrane ...
IOP Publishing Ltd2022Effects of wing kinematics, corrugation, and clap-and-fling on aerodynamic efficiency of a hovering insect-inspired flapping-wing micro air vehicle
A flapping-wing micro air vehicle (FW-MAV) operating with aerodynamically optimal wing configuration and kinematics may save energy and thus prolong flight time. In this work, we use a computational-fluid dynamic method to investigate the effects of wing k ...
ELSEVIER FRANCE-EDITIONS SCIENTIFIQUES MEDICALES ELSEVIER2021Phenomenology and scaling of optimal flapping wing kinematics
Karen Ann J Mulleners, Alexander Gehrke
Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping wing flight are dominated by large-scale vortical structures tha ...
IOP PUBLISHING LTD2021Stall Delay and Leading-Edge Suction for a Pitching Airfoil with Trailing-Edge Flap
Karen Ann J Mulleners, Julien Dominique Claude Deparday, Guosheng He
The flow around a pitching NACA0015 airfoil with an oscillating trailing-edge flap is experimentally investigated to characterize the influence of the flap kinematics on the development of dynamic stall. We specifically focus on the timing of the stall dev ...
2020Understanding turbulent free-surface vortex flows using a Taylor-Couette flow analogy
Free-surface vortices have long been studied to develop an understanding of similar rotating flow phenomena observed in nature and technology. However, a complete description of its turbulent three-dimensional flow field still remains elusive. In contrast, ...
2018Unsteady fluid dynamics around a hovering flat plate wing
Insect flight is characterised by complex time-dependent flows in response to the unsteady wing movements. Biological fliers exploit the unsteady flow fields to modulate aerodynamic forces, thereby displaying unmatched flight performance, especially in hov ...
EPFL2017