Dragonfly flight: free-flight and tethered flow visualizations reveal a diverse array of unsteady lift-generating mechanisms, controlled primarily via angle of attack.
Here we show, by qualitative free- and tethered-flight flow visualization, that dragonflies fly by using unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms to generate high-lift, leading-edge vortices. In normal free flight, dragonflies use counterstroking kinematics, with a leading-edge vortex (LEV) on the forewing d...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2004
|