Paper Title (use style: paper title)

Mechanism of Flight Control in Insects Flight Control in Bees

JENICO.JDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringAlagappa Chettiar College of Engineering & TechnologyKaraikudi - 630004jenico.kennedygmail.com ; 9894360571 RAGAV.NDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringAlagappa Chettiar College of Engineering & TechnologyKaraikudi - 630004ragav.tiger@gmail.com ; 9487708654

Bees are fascinating creatures whose flying capabilities have baffled scientists, physicists, engineers and the like for several decades. Their ability to fly has defied all the theories and postulates of classical aerodynamics. The wingspan of a bee is too small relative to the size of its body said the people of 20th century. They were wrong because the calculations they did was for a bee-size aero plane with fixed wings not for bee with flexible wings. Only in the recent past have the scientists began to comprehend the mechanisms behind the flight of bees and their complex wing motions with the aid of recent developments in high-speed videography and tools for computational and mechanical modeling. This has allowed researchers to make rapid progress in advancing our understanding of insect flight. These mechanical and computational fluid dynamic models, combined with modern flow visualization techniques, have revealed that the fluid dynamic phenomena underlying flapping flight are different from those of non-flapping, 2-D wings on which most previous models were based. In particular, even at high angles of attack, a prominent leading edge vortex remains stably attached on the insect wing and does not shed into an unsteady wake, as would be expected from non-flapping 2-D wings. Its presence greatly enhances the forces generated by the wing, thus enabling insects to hover or maneuver. In addition, flight forces are further enhanced by other mechanisms acting during changes in angle of attack, especially at stroke reversal, the mutual interaction of the two wings at dorsal stroke reversal or wingwake interactions following stroke reversal. This progress has enabled the development of simple analytical and empirical models that allow us to calculate the instantaneous forces on flapping insect wings more accurately than was previously possible. Further research in this field could result in new and exciting multi-disciplinary collaborations between physicists who seek to explain the phenomenon, biologists who seek to understand its relevance to insect physiology and evolution, and engineers who are inspired to build micro-robotic insects using these principles. This paper covers the basic physical principles underlying flapping flight in insects, results of recent experiments concerning the aerodynamics of insect flight, as well as the different approaches used to model these phenomena. These are some of the equations used for modeling.