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Effects of Unequal Individual Spacing on the Aerodynamic Performance of Three Flapping Wings in Tandem

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1 State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, School of Aerospace Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

* Corresponding Author: Gang Chen. Email:

The International Conference on Computational & Experimental Engineering and Sciences 2023, 27(4), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.32604/icces.2023.09892

Abstract

Many species generally choose highly organized movements to gain more performance advantages rather than alone in the animal world, such as V-formation and line formation in birds. Understanding the aerodynamic characteristics and flow variation of multi-flapping wings in formation flight could be applied to the formation design of new bionic flapping-wing aircraft. In this paper, the effects of unequal individual spacing on the aerodynamic performance and flow mechanism of three-dimensional three-flapping wings flying in tandem formation are investigated numerically at a low Reynolds number. The simulations include small and large spacings, as well as cases with equal and unequal spacings of adjacent individuals. The results show that unequal individual spacing has a significant effect on the aerodynamic performance of groups and individuals in tandem formation flight. In addition, exchanging the spacing of adjacent individuals in the same formation would not change the aerodynamic performance of the group, but would dramatically change the benefit distribution of individuals. A detailed analysis of the flow field variations reveals the connection between individual spacing changes and flow mechanism changes. It also explained whether the narrow channel effect in the downstroke and the wake capture effect in the upstroke could be applied in tandem formation flight, subject to the variation of individual spacing.

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