The Influence of Wing Deformation on Energy Extraction During Dynamic Soaring

The wandering albatross’s wings have excellent aerodynamic performance, allowing it to travel thousands of miles over the ocean without flapping its wings. In order to explore the correlation between the deformation pattern of the albatross’s wings and the energy extraction of dynamic soaring, a single-cycle energy model for dynamic soaring of albatross was established based on the albatross-inspired wing design. After extracting the typical deformation patterns of albatross’s wings during dynamic soaring, the energy variation of different patterns in dynamic soaring were calculated based on the single-cycle energy model. Finally, we acquire the optimal wing deformation pattern for different phases of dynamic soaring, which obtains 5% more total energy extraction than the optimal single-cycle fixed deformation pattern. Comparing with the rectangular wing, the total energy extraction increases about 19%. The energy consumption of the low-altitude turn phase was reduced by about 8% compared with the single-cycle fixed deformation pattern and the rectangular wing.