Event

Aerospace Engineering Departmental Seminar: Prof. Haibo Dong: "An Integrated Study of Wing-Wake Interactions in Bio-inspired Flight"

Professor Haibo Dong

Professor Haibo Dong

Wright State University

Friday, November 20, 2009
2:10-3:00 PM
Room 1235 Howe Hall

An Integrated Study of Wing-Wake Interactions in Bio-inspired Flight

 Developing a class of small-sized aircraft, usually referred to micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) (with wingspans <0.15m, flight speeds <10 m/s, and Reynolds numbers <105) based on the success of insects’ evolution, becomes overwhelming. Insect-inspired designs are attractive because, in contrast to flying birds and mammals, no musculature extends into the wings of insects. This leads to significantly simpler wing actuation schemes. It has been discovered that insect wing actuation is also coupled with ingenious wing structural designs that extract maximum advantage from elastic tailoring and other unique mechanisms such as wing-wing and wing-wake interactions to enable instantaneous high lift generation and highly maneuverable flight. However, the lack of quantitative knowledge of the aerodynamics of the insect flight severely impedes its implementation to MAVs.  In this talk, a novel approach is introduced to study bilateral and ipsilateral wing-wing interactions in insect flights by combining in-house high-speed videogrammetry, high-fidelity computing solver, and reduced-order modeling tools. As a representative example of ipsilateral wing-wing interaction, dragonflies in take-off and slow flight will be discussed. A modeled fruitfly is also used to reveal the relations between aerodynamic performance, vortex formation, and motion kinematics in dorsal wing-wing interactions.BIO:  Dr. Haibo Dong received his Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering from UCLA in 2002. He then joined George Washington University as a post-doctoral researcher in the ONR MURI program working on the bio-hydrodynamics of fish swimming and bio-robotic autonomous undersea vehicles (BAUV). In 2006, he became a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Wright State University. His current research involves Computational Fluid Dynamics, Cartesian grids methodology, bio-mimetic, bio-inspired flow, energy efficiency of small engines, and Micro Air Vehicles.

Professor Haibo Dong's Website