Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userA mass-spring fluid-structure interaction solver: Application to flexible revolving wings
126
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
The secret to the spectacular flight capabilities of flapping insects lies in their wings, which are often approximated as flat, rigid plates. Real wings are however delicate structures, composed of veins and membranes, and can undergo significant deformation. In the present work, we present detailed numerical simulations of such deformable wings. Our results are obtained with a fluid-structure interaction solver, coupling a mass-spring model for the flexible wing with a pseudo-spectral code solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. We impose the no-slip boundary condition through the volume penalization method; the time-dependent complex geometry is then completely described by a mask function. This allows solving the governing equations of the fluid on a regular Cartesian grid. Our implementation for massively parallel computers allows us to perform high resolution computations with up to 500 million grid points. The mass-spring model uses a functional approach, thus modeling the different mechanical behaviors of the veins and the membranes of the wing. We perform a series of numerical simulations of a flexible revolving bumblebee wing at a Reynolds number Re = 1800. In order to assess the influence of wing flexibility on the aerodynamics, we vary the elasticity parameters and study rigid, flexible and highly flexible wing models. Code validation is carried out by computing classical benchmarks.
rate research
Read More
Wing flexibility plays an essential role in the aerodynamic performance of insects due to the considerable deformation of their wings during flight under the impact of inertial and aerodynamic forces. These forces come from the complex wing kinematics of insects. In this study, both wing structural dynamics and flapping wing motion are taken into account to investigate the effect of wing deformation on the aerodynamic efficiency of a bumblebee in tethered flight. A fluid-structure interaction solver, coupling a mass-spring model for the flexible wing with a pseudo-spectral code solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, is implemented for this purpose. We first consider a tethered bumblebee flying in laminar flow with flexible wings. Compared to the rigid model, flexible wings generate smaller aerodynamic forces but require much less power. Finally, the bumblebee model is put into a turbulent flow to investigate its influence on the force production of flexible wings.
A rigorous derivation and validation for linear fluid-structure-interaction (FSI) equations for a rigid-body-motion problem is performed in an Eulerian framework. We show that the added-stiffness terms arising in the formulation of Fanion et al. (2000) vanish at the FSI interface in a first-order approximation. Several numerical tests with rigid-body motion are performed to show the validity of the derived formulation by comparing the time evolution between the linear and non-linear equations when the base flow is perturbed by identical small-amplitude perturbations. In all cases both the growth rate and angular frequency of the instability matches within $0.1%$ accuracy. The derived formulation is used to investigate the phenomenon of symmetry breaking for a rotating cylinder with an attached splitter-plate. The results show that the onset of symmetry breaking can be explained by the existence of a zero-frequency linearly unstable mode of the coupled fluid-structure-interaction system. Finally, the structural sensitivity of the least stable eigenvalue is studied for an oscillating cylinder, which is found to change significantly when the fluid and structural frequencies are close to resonance.
We investigate the effect of wing twist flexibility on lift and efficiency of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle capable of liftoff. Wings used previously were chosen to be fully rigid due to modeling and fabrication constraints. However, biological wings are highly flexible and other micro air vehicles have successfully utilized flexible wing structures for specialized tasks. The goal of our study is to determine if dynamic twisting of flexible wings can increase overall aerodynamic lift and efficiency. A flexible twisting wing design was found to increase aerodynamic efficiency by 41.3%, translational lift production by 35.3%, and the effective lift coefficient by 63.7% compared to the rigid-wing design. These results exceed the predictions of quasi-steady blade element models, indicating the need for unsteady computational fluid dynamics simulations of twisted flapping wings.
We study fluid-structure interactions (FSIs) in a long and shallow microchannel, conveying a non-Newtonian fluid, at steady state. The microchannel has a linearly elastic and compliant top wall, while its three other walls are rigid. The fluid flowing inside the microchannel has a shear-dependent viscosity described by the power-law rheological model. We employ lubrication theory to solve for the flow problem inside the long and shallow microchannel. For the structural problem, we employ two plate theories, namely Kirchhoff-Love theory of thin plates and Reissner-Mindlin first-order shear deformation theory. The hydrodynamic pressure couples the flow and deformation problem by acting as a distributed load onto the soft top wall. Within our perturbative (lubrication theory) approach, we determine the relationship between flow rate and the pressure gradient, which is a nonlinear first-order ordinary differential equation for the pressure. From the solution of this differential equation, all other quantities of interest in non-Newtonian microchannel FSIs follow. Through illustrative examples, we show the effect of FSI coupling strength and the plate thickness on the pressure drop across the microchannel. Through direct numerical simulation of non-Newtonian microchannel FSIs using commercial computational engineering tools, we benchmark the prediction from our mathematical prediction for the flow rate-pressure drop relation and the structural deformation profile of the top wall. In doing so, we also establish the limits of applicability of our perturbative theory.
A potential theory is presented for the problem of two moving cylinders, with possibly different radii, large motions, immersed in an perfect stagnant fluid. We show that the fluid force is the superposition of an added mass term, related to the time variations of the potential, and a quadratic term related to its spatial variations. We provide new simple and exact analytical expressions for the fluid added mass coefficients, in which the effect of the confinement is made explicit. The self-added mass (resp. cross-added mass) is shown to decrease (resp. increase) with the separation distance and increase (resp. decreases) with the radius ratio. We then consider the case in which one cylinder translates along the line joining the centers with a constant speed. We show that the two cylinders are repelled from each other, with a force that diverges to infinity at impact. We extend our approach to the case in which one cylinder is imposed a sinusoidal vibration. We show that the force on the stationnary cylinder and the vibration displacement have opposite (resp. identical) axial (resp. transverse) directions. For large vibration amplitudes, this force is strongly altered by the nonlinear effects induced by the spatial variations of the potential. The force on the vibrating cylinder is in phase with the imposed displacement and is mainly driven by the added mass term. The results of this paper are of particular interest for engineers who need to grab the essential features associated to the vibration of a solid body in a still fluid.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
