Bumblebee flight in heavy turbulence

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution simulations to analyze how turbulence affects bumblebee flight, revealing that turbulence increases flight variability but does not significantly alter average aerodynamic forces or power.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the aerodynamic stability of bumblebees in turbulent conditions through detailed numerical simulations.

Findings

Aerodynamic forces remain statistically unchanged across turbulence levels.

Variance in aerodynamic measures increases with turbulence intensity.

Flight stability may be compromised despite unchanged average forces.

Abstract

High-resolution numerical simulations of a tethered model bumblebee in forward flight are performed superimposing homogeneous isotropic turbulent fluctuations to the uniform inflow. Despite tremendous variation in turbulence intensity, between 17% and 99% with respect to the mean flow, we do not find significant changes in cycle-averaged aerodynamic forces, moments or flight power when averaged over realizations, compared to laminar inflow conditions. The variance of aerodynamic measures, however, significantly increases with increasing turbulence intensity, which may explain flight instabilities observed in freely flying bees.