Experimental investigation on the wing-wake interaction at the mid stroke in hovering flight of dragonfly

This paper focuses on flow structures of the wing-wake interaction between the hind wing and the wake of the forewing in hovering flight of a dragonfly since there are arguments whether the wing-wake interaction is useful or not. A mechanical flapping model with two tandem wings is used to study the interaction. In the device, two identical simplified model wings are mounted to the flapping model and they are both scaled up to keep the Reynolds number similar to those of dragonfly in hovering flight since our experiment is conducted in a water tank. The kinetic pattern of dragonfly (Aeschna juncea) is chosen because of its special interesting asymmetry. A multi-slice phase-locked stereo particle image velocimetry (PIV) system is used to record flow structures around the hind wing at the mid downstroke (t/T=0.25) and the mid upstroke (t/T=0.75). To make comparison of the flow field between with and without the influence of the wake, flow structures around a single flapping wing (hind wing without the existence of the forewing) at these two stroke phases are also recorded. A local vortex identification scheme called swirling strength is applied to determine the vortices around the wing and they are visualized with the iso-surface of swirling strength. This paper also presents contour lines of ωz at each spanwise position of the hind wing, the vortex core position of the leading edge vortex (LEV) of hind wing with respect to the upper surface of hind wing, the circulation of the hind wing LEV at each spanwise position and so on. Experimental results show that dimension and strength of the hind wing LEV are impaired at the mid stroke in comparison with the single wing LEV because of the downwash from the forewing. Our results also reveal that a wake vortex from the forewing traverses the upper surface of the hind wing at the mid downstroke and its distance to the upper surface is about 40% of the wing chord length. At the instant, the distance of the hind wing LEV to the upper surface is about 20% of the wing chord length. Thus, there must be a wing-wake interaction mechanism that makes the wake vortex become an additional LEV of the hind wing and it can partly compensate the hind wing for its lift loss caused by the downwash from the forewing.