# The impact of turbulence on flying insects in tethered and free flight: high-resolution numerical experiments

## TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution numerical simulations to analyze how turbulence affects the aerodynamics and stability of flying insects, revealing that turbulence intensity has limited impact on average forces but increases fluctuations, while turbulence scale influences force variability.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis of insect flight in turbulent flow, examining both tethered and free flight with variable turbulence characteristics and passive responses.

## Key findings

- Turbulence intensity does not significantly alter average aerodynamic forces.
- Force and moment fluctuations increase with turbulence intensity.
- Smaller integral scales of turbulence reduce force fluctuation levels.

## Abstract

Flapping insects are remarkably agile fliers, adapted to a highly turbulent environment. We present a series of high resolution numerical simulations of a bumblebee interacting with turbulent inflow. We consider both tethered and free flight, the latter with all six degrees of freedom coupled to the Navier--Stokes equations. To this end we vary the characteristics of the turbulent inflow, either changing the turbulence intensity or the spectral distribution of turbulent kinetic energy. Active control is excluded in order to quantify the passive response real animals exhibit during their reaction time delay, before the wing beat can be adapted. Modifying the turbulence intensity shows no significant impact on the cycle-averaged aerodynamical forces, moments and power, compared to laminar inflow conditions. The fluctuations of aerodynamic observables, however, significantly grow with increasing turbulence intensity. Changing the integral scale of turbulent perturbations, while keeping the turbulence intensity fixed, shows that the fluctuation level of forces and moments is significantly reduced if the integral scale is smaller than the wing length. Our study shows that the scale-dependent energy distribution in the surrounding turbulent flow is a relevant factor conditioning how flying insects control their body orientation.