Fascinating Flapping Flights: Unraveling the Unpredictability

Speaker : Chandan Bose.

Venue : HSB 210 (S.N.Bose Hall: Physics)

Date : 16 February, 2018

Time : 5.30 p.m.

Abstract

How does a bird or an insect fly? In spite of being a longstanding fundamental question, the highly unsteady nature of flows over flapping wings makes the theoretical and experimental treatment of the subject intricate as well as challenging. The diverse and stunning aerial acrobatics of natural flyers result in complex vortex interactions generating widely different vortex patterns in the wake, a proper understanding of which would help to enhance the design, predictability and control of small sized, power-efficient and highly maneuverable micro air vehicles (MAVs). However, with the change in kinematic parameters, the vortex-wake interactions can lead to have an abrupt transition from periodicity to aperiodicity in the wake topology as well as in the aerodynamic loads which can indeed lead to a chaotic body motion! The present talk will focus on this unpredictable wake dynamics of a flapping wing.

About the speaker

Chandan Bose is a research scholar in the Uncertainty Lab, Dept. of Applied Mechanics and the Biomimetics and Dynamics Lab, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering guided by Dr. Sayan Gupta and Dr. Sunetra Sarkar. His primary area of research interests include Fluid Mechanics and Nonlinear Dynamics. He is currently working on the unsteady aero(hydro)dynamics and nonlinear fluid-structure interactions of flapping wings and swimming fins. His research finds applications in understanding the underlying physics of bio-inspired propulsions such as insect flight and swimming of fishes and also in the development of bio-inspired flapping Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs).