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First published online January 25, 2005
Journal of Experimental Biology 208, 447-459 (2005)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2005
doi: 10.1242/jeb.01407

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Dynamic flight stability of a hovering bumblebee

Mao Sun^* and Yan Xiong

Institute of Fluid Mechanics, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing 100083, People's Republic of China

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: m.sun{at}263.net)

Accepted 24 November 2004

The longitudinal dynamic flight stability of a hovering bumblebee was studied using the method of computational fluid dynamics to compute the aerodynamic derivatives and the techniques of eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis for solving the equations of motion.

For the longitudinal disturbed motion, three natural modes were identified: one unstable oscillatory mode, one stable fast subsidence mode and one stable slow subsidence mode. The unstable oscillatory mode consists of pitching and horizontal moving oscillations with negligible vertical motion. The period of the oscillations is 0.32 s (approx. 50 times the wingbeat period of the bumblebee). The oscillations double in amplitude in 0.1 s; coupling of nose-up pitching with forward horizontal motion (and nose-down pitching with backward horizontal motion) in this mode causes the instability. The stable fast subsidence mode consists of monotonic pitching and horizontal motions, which decay to half of the starting values in 0.024 s. The stable slow subsidence mode is mainly a monotonic descending (or ascending) motion, which decays to half of its starting value in 0.37 s.

Due to the unstable oscillatory mode, the hovering flight of the bumblebee is dynamically unstable. However, the instability might not be a great problem to a bumblebee that tries to stay hovering: the time for the initial disturbances to double (0.1 s) is more than 15 times the wingbeat period (6.4 ms), and the bumblebee has plenty of time to adjust its wing motion before the disturbances grow large.

Key words: dynamic stability, flapping flight, hovering, bumblebee, insect, Navier-Stokes simulation, natural modes of motion, bumblebee

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