Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-21-2025
Abstract
Insect wings are flexible, elastically deforming under loads experienced during flapping. The adaptive value of this flexibility was tested using a revolving wing set-up. We show that the wing flexibility of the beetle Batocera rufomaculata, suppresses the reduction in lift coefficient that is expected to occur with a reduction of wing size compared to rigid propeller blades. Moreover, the scaling of wing flexibility with size is intra-specifically tuned through changes in wing-vein cross-section, resulting in smaller wings achieving proportionally larger chordwise deformations compared to larger wings, when loaded with aerodynamic forces. These elastic deformations control the separation of flow from the wing as a function of Angle-of-Attack, as evidenced by the turbulence activity in the flow-field directly beneath the revolving wings. The study underlines the contribution of flexibility to control the flow over insect wings through passive wing deformations without the need for input or feedback from the nervous system.
This article was published Open Access through the CCU Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund. The article was first published in iScience: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112035
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Ribak, G., Stearns, O., Sundararajan, K., Dickerson-Evans, D., Melamed, D., Rabinovich, M., and Gurka, R. (2025). Insect wing flexibility improves the aerodynamic performance of small revolving wings. iScience 28, 112035. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112035. Available at https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/physics-engineering/3/
