Experimental Investigation of Butterfly Flight

Objectives

• Understand the agile evasiveness and maneuverability of butterflies
• Understand the endurance of Monarch butterflies, enabling migration over 200 km a day (longest among insects)
• Understand the effects of high-altitude environment on the Monarch butterfly flight (spotted at 10,000 feet)
• Model and analyze the coupling between unsteady aerodynamics, anisotropic flexible wings, fore/hindwing combination, and body undulation of butterfly flight

Highlights

Approach - Multi-fidelity Analysis

Achievements

• Established a reliable marker distribution for optimal data capture.
• Developed techniques to extract morphological and structural data.
• Conducted multiple flight tests to assess validity of the model and to quantify experimental uncertainties.
• Obtained preliminary analysis on the role of hind wings and effects of wind gusts

Researchers

Future Work

• Development of artificial butterfly
• Additional wing kinematics measurements
• Modeling and analysis of the coupled dynamics
• Vacuum chamber tests to simulate high altitude flight

• Dr. Chang-kwon Kang, Assistant Professor, MAE
• Graduate Students: Madhu Sridhar, Jake Cranford
• NSF REU Student: Raisa Chowdhury