Numerical Investigation on the Thrust Performance of Bionic Motion Wing in Schools

After billions of years of natural selection, creatures such as birds, insects and fish have developed excellent flight and mobility capabilities. Understanding on their movement mechanism can help us to develop new unmanned vehicles. It can also present reasonable explanations on biological evolution and morphological adaptability. In nature, birds and fishes often fly and swarm in schools. The phenomenon of biological clustering will be explained in the perspective of fluid mechanics. With the rapid development of computer technology, numerical study of biological motion has become the hot spot. The immersed-lattice Boltzmann method was used to study the biomimetic movement in Chinese Tianhe-II supercomputer. Based on the research of propulsion performance and vortex evolution of single bionic motion wing, multi-flapping wings in schools are numerically investigated. Triangle arrangements were employed to study overall propulsion performance and the unsteady flow mechanism. The influence of space distance of bionic motion wings in schools on thrust performance and vortex structure were analysed further. The numerical results show that the average thrust coefficients of the wings in schools are bigger than that of the single flapping wing. When the flapping wings are in triangular arrangement, the average thrust coefficient is related to the distance. The research on the motion mechanism of bionic wings and the way of bionics promotion will help to explore a new type of driving mode and provide the foundation for the development of bionic mechanisms.