Lagrangian Approach to Capture the Unsteady Aerodynamics of Insect- Like Flapping Flight

摘要

A Lagrangian viscous vortex technique is used in the present study to simulate the unsteady flow field of flapping flight. The method is grid free and computations are done only at the regions of non-zero vorticity. As a result this method is quite suitable for simulating the unsteady vertical flow- field past flapping wings and airfoils; it provides an accurate and fast flow- visualization. The main strength of this tool is its grid free nature; as the resolution of the grid is a crucial parameter in resolving the unsteady flow- field accurately. It is also relatively easy to implement a grid-free particle based technique for a moving boundaries or complex geometries. In this algorithm, field property vorticity is carried by discrete particles which convects with the Biot-Savart velocity and diffuses with random walk.