Lateral Flight Stability of Two Hovering Model Insects

The longitudinal disturbance motion of different insects at hovering flight has the same modal structure. Here, we consider the case of lateral motion. The lateral dynamic flight stability of two model insects, hoverfly and honeybee, at hovering flight is studied. The method of computational fluid dynamics is applied to compute the stability derivatives. The techniques of eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis are used to solve the equations of motion. Results show that the lateral disturbance motion of the hoverfly has three natural modes of motion: an unstable divergence mode, a stable oscillatory mode and a stable subsidence mode, and the flight is unstable; while the honeybee has a different modal structure (a stable slow subsidence mode, a stable fast subsidence mode, and a nearly neutrally stable oscillatory mode) and the flight is nearly neutrally stable. The change in modal structure between the two insects is due to their roll-moment/side-velocity derivative having different sign, and the sign difference is because that the hoverfly has a relatively small, but the honeybee has a relatively large, distance between the wing roots and the center of mass. Thus, unlike the case of longitudinal motion, for lateral motion, some insects have different modal structures and stability properties from others.