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Impact of turbulence on flying insects in tethered and free flight: High-resolution numerical experiments

Thomas Engels*

Dmitry Kolomenskiy

Kai Schneider

Marie Farge

Fritz-Olaf Lehmann

Jörn Sesterhenn

  • LMD-IPSL, École Normale Supérieure-PSL, 24 Rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

  • Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), 3173-25 Showa-machi, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama Kanagawa 236-0001, Japan

  • Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Centrale Marseille, I2M UMR 7373, Marseille, 39 rue Joliot-Curie, 13451 Marseille Cedex 20, France

  • CNRS-INSMI, LMD-IPSL, École Normale Supérieure-PSL, 24 Rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

  • Department of Animal Physiology, Universität Rostock, Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Strasse 3, 18059 Rostock, Germany

  • ISTA, Technische Universität Berlin, Müller-Breslau-Strasse 12, 10623 Berlin, Germany

  • *thomas.engels@ens.fr
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Phys. Rev. Fluids 4, 013103 – Published 16 January, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.4.013103

Abstract

Flapping insects are remarkably agile fliers, adapted to a highly turbulent environment. We present a series of high-resolution numerical simulations of a bumblebee interacting with turbulent inflow. We consider both tethered and free flight, the latter with all six degrees of freedom coupled to the Navier-Stokes equations. To this end, we vary the characteristics of the turbulent inflow, either changing the turbulence intensity or the spectral distribution of turbulent kinetic energy. Active control is excluded in order to quantify the passive response real animals exhibit during their reaction time delay, before the wing beat can be adapted. Modifying the turbulence intensity shows no significant impact on the cycle-averaged aerodynamical forces, moments, and power, compared to laminar inflow conditions. The fluctuations of aerodynamic observables, however, significantly grow with increasing turbulence intensity. Changing the integral scale of turbulent perturbations, while keeping the turbulence intensity fixed, shows that the fluctuation level of forces and moments is significantly reduced if the integral scale is smaller than the wing length. Our study shows that the scale-dependent energy distribution in the surrounding turbulent flow is a relevant factor conditioning how flying insects control their body orientation.

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Phys. Rev. Fluids 4, 013103– Published 16 January, 2019
  • Received 22 April 2018
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