Solving the mystery of insect essays

Solving the mystery of insect essays Solving the Mystery of Insect Flight Insects Use a Combination of Aerodynamic Effects to Remain Aloft It is obvious to the casual observer that an insect, flapping its wings 20 to 600 times a second, does not fly like an airplane. Insect wings do not only oscillate up and down, they also trace an oval tilted at a steep angle. The wings also change orientation during each flap- the top faces up during the down stroke, and then the wing rotates so the underside faces up during the upstroke. Early analysis of insect flight tries to apply conventional steady-state aerodynamics that works for aircraft wings, to the complex motions of insect wings. This took into account the changing velocity of the wings as they went through the air. An example would be to stop the insects wing at a particular spot in the stroke cycle and then test it in a wind tunnel. Set the wind velocity and orientation to mimic the movement of the wing through the air. Now one can measure the aerodynamic force acting on the wing at each moment. If the steady state theory was sufficient, the average force should point upward and equal to the insects weight. In the early 1980s Charles Ellington of the University of Cambridge reviewed all of the evidence and concluded that the steady-state theory did not work for the forces required. The search for the answer of how insects fly started again. In 1998, Fritz-Olaf Lehmann, Sanjay P. Sane, and Michael Dickinson built a large model of a flapping fruit fly the Robofly. The robotic fly was placed in a tank of Solving the Mystery of Insect Flight 4 viscous mineral oil that made the 25-centimeter wings flapping once every 5 seconds similar to 2.5 millimeter fly wings flapping 200 times a second. The scientists measured two critical properties, the aerodynamic forces on the wings and the fluid flow around them. Both of which are impossible to examine on a real fly. R...