What is it about?
The increasing interest on the concept of Micro Air Vehicles (MAV’s) and the Nano Air Vehicles (NAV’s) has been driven by the need to understand insect and birds flight in order to provide their practical use in situations where conventional flight cannot be used. The forces produced by a bird (Columbia Livia) were measured during the take-off using a fast data acquisition force sensor and high speed camera.
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Why is it important?
It was found that the birds can produce special movements just before taking-off that will enhance the performance of the maneuver. In the present case, the bird stretches the neck forward and moves the head down, then stretches even more the neck and finally moves the head up while impelling himself into the air, resulting in an enhanced mechanical force against perch. The results have shown that Columba livia can generate about 4 times its weight of take-off force against perch, revealing that the conventional flight approach is unapplicable.
Perspectives
This article confirms that MAV's (that may include autonomous flight) which are inspired in the flying animals cannot use the conventional principle of separation of propulsion and lift of present aircrafts. The present work has proven that in the take-off phase a quite diferent principle is used to produce the main relevant forces.
Professor Jorge M M Barata
Universidade da Beira Interior
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Experimental Analysis of Forces During Take-Off of Birds, January 2017, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2017-1373.
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