Abstract
Insect flapping flight can offer some novel mechanisms useful in designing MAVs (Micro Air Vehicles), a flyer with a maximal dimension of 15 cm. There have been many fascinating works done on the biological flights of moth, fly, bee and so forth in the last decade, but still very few is found about butterflies. Butterflies have low aspect-ratio wings and low wing beat frequencies, but in general exhibit apparently pitching oscillations vertically during flapping flight. Additionally, they change the wing areas during flapping flight, which is called wing-morphing. In this study, aiming at providing a comprehensive study on aerodynamic mechanisms in butterfly flights we have carried out a CFD-based numerical simulation of flapping flight in butterfly on a basis of realistic wing-body geometry and wing kinematics.
