Computation study about the interaction between the tandem flying snake airfoils with dynamic motion

Abstract

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2023-2460.vid During gliding, flying snakes are able to bend their body into an S shape to achieve aerial undulation during gliding. Such body posture will inevitably lead to body-body interaction thus affect the aerodynamic performance on the snake body. It’s be observed that anterior and posterior body have different relative positions. Furthermore, the body posture is constantly shifting, leading to the dynamic motion between the snake airfoils. This phenomenon inspired a canonical problem which has been investigated numerically in this paper. The numerical models of two-dimensional (2D) snake cross-sectional airfoil with different tandem configuration along with different dynamic motions were created. An immersed-boundary-method (IBM)-based direct numerical simulation (DNS) flow solver was applied to conduct the numerical simulation. An adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technique was applied improve the grid resolution near the snake model. Results have shown lift change with the wake capture for the downstream body. Results from this study will bring detailed knowledge for flying snakes’ gliding mechanism and control provide inspiration for bio-inspired robots designing from an aerodynamic perspective.