How to flap a wing: Testing how kinematics determine aerodynamic performance in birds.

To achieve steady flight across speeds, birds flap their wings. Flapping provides thrust and weight support, but how to flap to maximize force or efficiency is not well understood.

Flapping changes the flow across the wings, suggesting differently shaped wings should not be flapped the same way to be efficient.

It also suggests that flapping selects for different feather morphology than gliding to achieve aeroelastic control of the aerodynamics. Here I aim to determine how flapping affects bird flight performance using state-of-the-art methods.

Using a highly articulated robot I will explore how kinematics determine force and efficiency and test if birds move their wings optimally. Using different wings I will test how shape affects optimal kinematics.

Through computational experiments I will test how feather morphology affects fluid-structure interactions and aeroelastic control in gliding vs flapping flight.

Finally, I will measure the flow, pressure, and fluid-structure interactions in wind tunnel studies of live birds to test how wing tip shape relates to kinematics and aerodynamic performance.

Understanding morphological adaptations to flapping and gliding will help interpret fossil feathers and impact our view on evolution of flight, but also inspire novel wind turbine design.

Determining optimal wing kinematics, related to wing shape, will improve flight models used to understand bird migration and provide a road map for designing flapping Micro Air Vehicles.