Towards a realistic fruitfly wing model with flexibility

Much of research conducted to date assumes that insect wings are perfectly rigid and flat surfaces, whose motions, translation and rotation, are prescribed. This paper introduces the flexibility onto insect wings via the variation of stiffness and elemental mass. By static analysis, the characteristic deformation was revealed in two major directions: spanwise and chordwise. Further tuning the material distribution, a more realistic deformation was obtained which shows biased flexibility toward chordwise direction. The following dynamic analysis offered information about actual inertial loading which is mostly spanwise bending. The wing model is refined to produced more chordwise flexibility without affecting the bending resistance along the span. Finally a set of comprehensive computations on the realistic model with both inertial and fluid load were carried out. This paper presents an insight into the flexibility effects by quantification analysis of aerodynamic forces and power expenditure produced by f...