The effects of wing inertial forces and mean stroke angle on the pitch stability of hovering insects

Abstract

This paper discusses the wing inertial effects on stability of pitch motion of hovering insects. The paper also presents a dynamic model appropriate for using averaging techniques and discusses the pitch stability results derived from the model. The model is used to predict the body angle of five insect species during hover, which are in good agreement with the available experimental results from different literature. The results suggest that the wing inertia forces have a considerable effect on pitch dynamics of insect flight and should not be ignored in dynamic analysis of hovering insects. The results also suggest that, though the pitch stability of hovering insects is open-loop stable, it may not be vibrationally stabilized. Instead, the pitch stability is a balance of the moment of insect's weight and the aerodynamic moment due to flapping kinematics with a nonzero mean stroke angle. Experiments with a flapping wing device confirm this results. To clearly explain the used model and clarify the difference between vibrational and non-vibrational stabilization, first this paper discusses the vibrational control of a three-degree-of-freedom force-input pendulum with its pivot moving in a vertical plane.