Computer modeling techniques for flapping-wing aerodynamics of a locust

We present an overview of the special computer modeling techniques we have developed recently for flapping-wing aerodynamics of a locust. The wing motion and deformation data is from an actual locust, extracted from high-speed, multi-camera video recordings of the locust in a wind tunnel. The special techniques have been developed around our core computational technique, which is the Deforming-Spatial-Domain/Stabilized Space-Time (DSD/SST) formulation. Here we use the version of the DSD/SST formulation derived in conjunction with the variational multiscale (VMS) method, and this version is called DSD/SST-VMST. The special techniques are based on using, in the space-time flow computations, NURBS basis functions for the temporal representation of the motion and deformation of the locust wings. Temporal NURBS basis functions are used also in representation of the motion of the volume meshes computed and in remeshing. In this special-issue paper, we present a condensed version of the material from [1], concentrating on the flapping-motion modeling and computations, and also a temporal-order study from [2]. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.