Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 148101 (2007) [4 pages]Effect of Forewing and Hindwing Interactions on Aerodynamic Forces and Power in Hovering Dragonfly FlightReceived 13 December 2006; published 1 October 2007 Dragonflies are four-winged insects that have the ability to control aerodynamic performance by modulating the phase lag (ϕ) between forewings and hindwings. We film the wing motion of a tethered dragonfly and compute the aerodynamic force and power as a function of the phase. We find that the out-of-phase motion as seen in steady hovering uses nearly minimal power to generate the required force to balance the weight, and the in-phase motion seen in takeoffs provides an additional force to accelerate. We explain the main hydrodynamic interaction that causes this phase dependence. © 2007 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.148101
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.148101
PACS:
47.63.−b, 47.32.C−, 47.32.Ff, 47.85.lb
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