Effect of stroke plane inclination on the hovering aerodynamic performance of tandem flapping foils

Abstract

Abstract The four-winged form of dragonfly and damselfly allows them to fly with great agility and endurance, which are accomplished by independently controlling the kinematics of each wing. In this study, we performed numerical simulations of two tandem airfoils oscillating along an inclined stroke plane at R e = 157 . We investigated the effects of the stroke plane angle ( β ) of forefoil and hindfoil on the aerodynamic performance of dragonflies (or damselflies) hovering flight. Simulations were conducted for parallel and non-parallel stroke planes of forefoil and hindfoil oscillating with three phase differences: ϕ = 0 o , 90 o and 180 o . For parallel stroke planes, the results show that the total lift increases with β , whereas the total thrust decreases in same condition. In addition, the total lift and thrust decrease with an increase in ϕ . The forefoil performance is affected by the flow induced by hindfoil’s leading-edge vortices, and the hindfoil interactions with forefoil’s wake vortices significantly affect the hindfoil’s performance. The findings demonstrate that non-parallel stroke planes exert detrimental effects on the total lift for ϕ = 0 o and 90 o . However, for ϕ = 180 o , the lift augmentation of 46% is obtained in the case where the forefoil stroke plane angle is smaller than the hindfoil. The results obtained during this investigation can help in optimizing the wing kinematics during the micro air vehicles development.