title: Bumblebee Flight in Heavy Turbulence.
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.
authors.affiliation: M2P2-CNRS & Aix-Marseille Université, 38 rue Joliot-Curie, 13451 Marseille cedex 20 France.|ISTA, Technische Universität Berlin, Müller-Breslau-Strasse 12, 10623 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Engels
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-Cho, Inage-Ku, Chiba-Shi, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kolomenskiy
authors.affiliation: M2P2-CNRS & Aix-Marseille Université, 38 rue Joliot-Curie, 13451 Marseille cedex 20 France.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Physiology, University of Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Strasse 3, 18059 Rostock, Germany.
authors.forename: F-O
authors.initials: FO
authors.lastname: Lehmann
authors.affiliation: ISTA, Technische Universität Berlin, Müller-Breslau-Strasse 12, 10623 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sesterhenn