ArticleRoyal Society open science2021
Beneficial wake-capture effect for forward propulsion with a restrained wing-pitch motion of a butterfly.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Body oscillations couple with wing flapping to reduce aerodynamic power in wild silk moth flight.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Interfacial vortex recapture enhances thrust in tiny water skaters.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The Lift Effects of Chordwise Wing Deformation and Body Angle on Low-Speed Flying Butterflies.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Downstroke and upstroke conflict during banked turns in butterflies.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Beneficial wake-capture effect for forward propulsion with a restrained wing-pitch motion of a butterfly.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Unlike other insects, a butterfly uses a small amplitude of the wing-pitch motion for flight. From an analysis of the dynamics of real flying butterflies, we show that the restrained amplitude of the wing-pitch motion enhances the wake-capture effect so as to enhance forward propulsion. A numerical simulation refined with experimental data shows that, for a small amplitude of the wing-pitch motion, the shed vortex generated in the downstroke induces air in the wake region to flow towards the wings. This condition enables a butterfly to capture an induced flow and to acquire an additional forward propulsion, which accounts for more than 47% of the thrust generation. When the amplitude of the wing-pitch motion exceeds 45°, the flow induced by the shed vortex drifts away from the wings; it attenuates the wake-capture effect and causes the butterfly to lose a part of its forward propulsion. Our results provide one essential aerodynamic feature for a butterfly to adopt a small amplitude of the wing-pitch motion to enhance the wake-capture effect and forward propulsion. This work clarifies the variation of the flow field correlated with the wing-pitch motion, which is useful in the design of wing kinematics of a micro-aerial vehicle.
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Registered trials
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