Validation of an Adaptive Meshing Implementation of the Lattice-Boltzmann Method for Insect Flight

Insects, sustaining flight at low Reynolds numbers (500<Re<10,000), fly utilizing mechanically simple kinematics (3 degrees of freedom) at an extremely high flap frequency (150–200 Hz), resulting in a complicated vortical fluid field. These flight characteristics result in some of the most agile and maneuverable flight capabilities in the animal kingdom and are considered to be far superior to fixed wing flight, such as aircraft. Bees are of particular interest because of the utilization of humuli to attach their front and hind wings together during flight. A Cartesian-based adaptive meshing implementation of the Lattice-Boltzmann Method is utilized to resolve the complex flow field generated during insect flight and is verified against experimental and computational results present in the literature in two dimensions. The Lattice-Boltzmann Method was found to agree well in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons with both two-dimensional computational and three-dimensional experimental results.