journal article
Jul 01, 2025
Ground effect on the aerodynamic characteristics and flow structure of a hovering dragonfly
Abstract
The ground effect of a hovering dragonfly was investigated through numerical simulations of both two-dimensional and three-dimensional dragonfly wings. An immersed boundary method, enhanced with a prediction-correction multi-direct forcing scheme and a smoothed discrete delta function, was employed. The inverse distance weighting interpolation was introduced to address the interpolation on a refined mesh. For two-dimensional simulation, the ground effect was divided into three regions: force enhancement, force reduction, and force recovery region. Various mechanisms, such as early or delayed vortex shedding, wall extrusion, vortex integration, and reattachment, were observed. Additionally, the vortex remained near the ground, altering the velocity difference between the wing and surrounding fluid through induced velocity. This led to a significant change in pressure on the windward side. A hysteresis phenomenon was discovered: in the force enhancement region, vertical force coefficient peaked at a later time. For three-dimensional simulation, the presence of ground resulted in a decrease in time-average vertical force coefficient. Additionally, the magnitude of this reduction diminished as the distance between the wing and ground increased. The influence of ground was primarily reflected in the more rapid growth of the vertical force coefficient during the initial stage of the downstroke, the magnitudes of its peak and trough values. These changes were attributed to alterations in the strength and state of the vortex near the wing, along with the induced effect of the rebounded vortex. It is more obvious during the downstroke that the downward velocity of the flow was enhanced, which causes the reduction of the relative inflow velocity to the wing.
Topics
No keywords indexed for this article. Browse by subject →
References
66
[1]
"Dragonfly flight. I. Gliding flight and steady-state aerodynamic forces" J. Exp. Biol. (1997) 10.1242/jeb.200.3.543
[2]
"Dragonfly flight. II. Velocities, accelerations and kinematics of flapping flight" J. Exp. Biol. (1997) 10.1242/jeb.200.3.557
[3]
"Dragonfly. III. Lift and power requirements" J. Exp. Biol. (1997) 10.1242/jeb.200.3.583
[4]
"Flight performance of a dragonfly" J. Exp. Biol. (1988) 10.1242/jeb.137.1.221
[5]
"Measuring wing kinematics, flight trajectory and body attitude during forward flight and turning maneuvers in dragonflies" J. Exp. Biol. (2003) 10.1242/jeb.00183
[6]
"3D reconstruction and analysis of wing deformation in free-flying dragonflies" J. Exp. Biol. (2012) 10.1242/jeb.069005
[7]
"Wing kinematics measurement and aerodynamics of a dragonfly in turning flight" Bioinspiration Biomimetics (2017) 10.1088/1748-3190/aa5761
[8]
"Quick estimates of flight fitness in hovering animals, including novel mechanisms for lift production" J. Exp. Biol. (1973) 10.1242/jeb.59.1.169
[9]
"An aerodynamic model for flapping-wing flight" Aeronaut. J. (1993) 10.1017/s0001924000026002
[10]
"Object-oriented unsteady vortex lattice method for flapping flight" J. Aircr. (2004) 10.2514/1.7357
[11]
"Aerodynamic characteristics of the wings and body of a dragonfly" J. Exp. Biol. (1996) 10.1242/jeb.199.2.281
[12]
"Three-dimensional flow produced by a pitching-plunging model dragonfly wing" (1987)
[13]
"Visualization of unsteady separated flow produced by mechanically driven dragonfly wing kinematics model" (1988)
[14]
"Dragonfly unsteady aerodynamics—The role of the wing phase relations in controlling the produced flows" (1989)
[15]
"Phasing of dragonfly wings can improve aerodynamic efficiency by removing swirl" J. R. Soc. Interface (2008) 10.1098/rsif.2008.0124
[16]
Three-dimensional flow structures and evolution of the leading-edge vortices on a flapping wing
Yuan Lu, Gong Xin Shen
Journal of Experimental Biology
2008
10.1242/jeb.010652
[17]
"An experimental study of a bio-inspired corrugated airfoil for micro air vehicle applications" Exp. Fluids (2010) 10.1007/s00348-010-0826-z
[18]
"The effect of phase angle and wing spacing on tandem flapping wings" Acta Mech. Sin. (2012) 10.1007/s10409-012-0210-8
[19]
"Effects of cambers on gliding and hovering performance of corrugated dragonfly airfoils" Int. J. Numer. Methods Heat Fluid Flow (2016) 10.1108/hff-10-2015-0414
[20]
"A novel geometry-adaptive cartesian grid based immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method for fluid–structure interactions at moderate and high Reynolds numbers" J. Comput. Phys. (2018) 10.1016/j.jcp.2018.08.024
[21]
"A computational study of the aerodynamic forces and power requirements of dragonfly (Aeschna juncea) hovering" J. Exp. Biol. (2004) 10.1242/jeb.00969
[22]
"A computational study of the aerodynamics and forewing-hindwing interaction of a model dragonfly in forward flight" J. Exp. Biol. (2005) 10.1242/jeb.01852
[23]
"The interplay of kinematics and aerodynamics in multiple flight modes of a dragonfly" J. Fluid Mech. (2023) 10.1017/jfm.2023.471
[24]
"A mass-spring fluid-structure interaction solver: Application to flexible revolving wings" Comput. Fluids (2020) 10.1016/j.compfluid.2020.104426
[25]
"Effects of kinematic parameters and corrugated structure on the aerodynamic performance of flexible dragonfly wings" J. Fluids Struct. (2024) 10.1016/j.jfluidstructs.2023.104058
[26]
"Fluid dynamics of flapping insect wing in ground effect" J. Bionic Eng. (2014) 10.1016/s1672-6529(14)60019-6
[27]
"Ground effect on tandem flapping wings hovering" Comput. Fluids (2017) 10.1016/j.compfluid.2017.04.006
[28]
"Ceiling effects on the aerodynamics of a flapping wing at hovering condition" Phys. Fluids (2019) 10.1063/1.5094661
[29]
"Ceiling effects on the aerodynamics of a flapping wing with advance ratio" Phys. Fluids (2020) 10.1063/1.5139930
[30]
"Aerodynamic effects of ceiling and ground vicinity on flapping wings" Appl. Sci. (2022) 10.3390/app12084012
[31]
"Very low Reynolds number causes a monotonic force enhancement trend for a three-dimensional hovering wing in ground effect" Bioinspiration Biomimetics (2021) 10.1088/1748-3190/ac1308
[32]
"A numerical investigation on the ground effect of a flapping-flying bird" Phys. Fluids (2013) 10.1063/1.4819503
[33]
"An immersed interface method for simulating the interaction of a fluid with moving boundaries" J. Comput. Phys. (2006) 10.1016/j.jcp.2005.12.016
[34]
"The role of drag in insect hovering" J. Exp. Biol. (2004) 10.1242/jeb.01239
[35]
"Pterostigma of insect wings an inertial regulator of wing pitch" J. Comp. Physiol. (1972) 10.1007/bf00693547
[36]
"Tandem-wing interactions on aerodynamic performance inspired by dragonfly hovering" R. Soc. Open Sci. (2021) 10.1098/rsos.202275
[37]
"SPHysics—Development of a free-surface fluid solver—Part 1: Theory and formulations" Comput. Geosci. (2012) 10.1016/j.cageo.2012.02.029
[38]
"MRI-based CFD analysis of flow in a human left ventricle: Methodology and application to a healthy heart" Ann. Biomed. Eng. (2009) 10.1007/s10439-008-9627-4
[39]
"A three-dimensional torsional spring analogy method for unstructured dynamic meshes" Comput. Struct. (2002) 10.1016/s0045-7949(02)00002-0
[40]
"Torsional springs for two-dimensional dynamic unstructured fluid meshes" Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. (1998) 10.1016/s0045-7825(98)00016-4
[41]
"Application of an overset mesh based numerical wave tank for modelling realistic free-surface hydrodynamic problems" Ocean Eng. (2019) 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2019.02.001
[42]
"High-order compact finite-difference methods on general overset grids" J. Comput. Phys. (2005) 10.1016/j.jcp.2005.04.017
[43]
"Distributed Lagrange multiplier/fictitious domain method in the framework of lattice Boltzmann method for fluid–structure interactions" J. Comput. Phys. (2005) 10.1016/j.jcp.2004.12.017
[44]
"A DLM/FD method for fluid/flexible-body interactions" J. Comput. Phys. (2005) 10.1016/j.jcp.2004.12.026
[45]
Flow patterns around heart valves: A numerical method
Charles S Peskin
Journal of Computational Physics
1972
10.1016/0021-9991(72)90065-4
[46]
"Immersed boundary methods for simulating fluid–structure interaction" Prog. Aeronaut. Sci. (2014) 10.1016/j.paerosci.2013.09.003
[47]
"Implicit second-order immersed boundary methods with boundary mass" Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. (2008) 10.1016/j.cma.2007.05.028
[48]
An immersed boundary method with direct forcing for the simulation of particulate flows
Markus Uhlmann
Journal of Computational Physics
2005
10.1016/j.jcp.2005.03.017
[49]
"A comparative study of Brinkman penalization and direct-forcing immersed boundary methods for compressible viscous flows" Comput. Fluids (2016) 10.1016/j.compfluid.2016.06.001
[50]
"A ghost-cell immersed boundary method for flow in complex geometry" J. Comput. Phys. (2003) 10.1016/j.jcp.2003.07.024
Showing 50 of 66 references
Metrics
3
Citations
66
References
Details
- Published
- Jul 01, 2025
- Vol/Issue
- 37(7)
Authors
Cite This Article
Dongli Han, Xing Shi, Yao Zheng (2025). Ground effect on the aerodynamic characteristics and flow structure of a hovering dragonfly. Physics of Fluids, 37(7). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0274735
Related
You May Also Like
An eddy-viscosity subgrid-scale model for turbulent shear flow: Algebraic theory and applications
A. W. Vreman · 2004
1,141 citations
Momentum transfer of a Boltzmann-lattice fluid with boundaries
M’hamed Bouzidi, Mouaouia Firdaouss · 2001
1,079 citations
Laminar drag reduction in microchannels using ultrahydrophobic surfaces
Jia Ou, Blair Perot · 2004
913 citations
Electrospinning and electrically forced jets. I. Stability theory
Moses M. Hohman, Michael Shin · 2001
901 citations