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The Flapping Flight of Birds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2016

Gilbert T. Walker
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Extract

In connection with gliding flight enough measurements of “ lift ” and “ drag ” have been made to enable us to calculate the conditions for success of an aeroplane fitted with wings of standard sections; but no attempt has been made, as far as the present writer is aware, to ascertain what would happen if a flying machine were fitted with wings of standard section and these were flapped in a rhythmical manner. Would it support and propel itself? Several authors, including M. F. Fitzgerald and Colonel J. D. Fullerton in the previous issue of this journal, have discussed various portions of this problem; but instead of appealing to wind-tunnel determinations the latter has used such expressions as pSUV or pSUV2 for the pressure on a wing of area S, where p is the density of the air and V, U are the component velocities along and at right angles to its surface.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 29 , Issue 179 , November 1925 , pp. 590 - 594
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1925

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References

Note on page 590 1 “ On Flapping Flight,” Proc. Roy. Soc., London, 83, p. 72, 1910. Here angles of incidence are not considered, but the resistance to acceleration of the wings is represented by a varying virtual addition to their mass.

2 See Bairstow, “ Applied Aerodynamics,” pp. 123-7.

3 Ibid., p. 126.

4 See Fig. 1.

Note on page 591 5 See Fig. 2.

Note on page 592 6 Report of the Bird Construction Committee, pp. 33, 6I.