Fig. 3: Aerodynamic forces acting on the wings of P. placentis.
From: Novel flight style and light wings boost flight performance of tiny beetles
a, Wing tip trajectories and direction of total vertical force: downward force (recovery stroke) is shown in green, upward force (power stroke) is shown in red. Posture at t/T of 0.6 is shown in red, and posture at t/T of 0.82 is in green. Cyan arrows show aerodynamic force; magenta arrows show wing-tip velocity; yellow discs and arrows show dorsal surface orientation of the wing at nine labelled time instants. Opaque and transparent lines and arrows correspond to right and left wing, respectively. b, Vector scheme of forces acting on wing. c, Airflow simulation visualized using iso-surfaces of vorticity magnitude (see also Supplementary Video 5). d, Vertical aerodynamic force (v.f.) exerted on one wing versus time. Yellow highlighted zones denote the time span of power strokes. Tot. mem., vertical force of membranous wing model. e, Body mass-specific aerodynamic (aero.) and inertial (inert.) power, and their sum as the total power. f, Pitching torque about centre of mass. The positive direction is nose down. g, Contribution of different parts to total aerodynamic force acting on the beetle in the vertical direction, averaged over the wingbeat cycle. h, Mean and peak body mass-specific aerodynamic power in computations for bristled and membranous (mem.) wings.
