Bat wing stiffness muscles and their activity

What is it about?

Bat wings are very different from other wings because they are very soft and flexible. When used in flight, bat wing shape changes passively as its stretched out by aerodynamic forces. The wing shape adopted determines their flight performance. We found that Bats activate muscles in their soft flexible wings, which should change wing stiffness and therefore the shape as well.

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Why is it important?

Soft flexible wings have a number of performance advantages over, the more common, stiff and rigid wings. One great challenge though, is that soft and flexible wings can passively deform into wing shapes that do not perform optimally. Bats have solved this problem by using muscles in their wings to tune the wing stiffness and better control the adopted wing shapes. This may be a key mechanism for broader adoption of compliant and flexible wings.