A study of a three-dimensional self-propelled flying bird with flapping wings

In this paper, a study of a three-dimensional (3D) self-propelled bionic flying bird in a viscous flow is carried out. This bionic bird is propelled and lifted through flapping and rotating wings, and better flying can be achieved by adjusting the flapping and rotation motion of wings. In this study, we found that the bird can fly faster forward and upward with appropriate center of rotation and oscillation without more energy consumption and have perfect flight performance at a certain angle of attack by adjusting the center of oscillation. The study utilizes a 3D computational fluid dynamics package which constitutes combined immersed boundary method and the volume of fluid method. In addition, it includes adaptive multigrid finite volume method and control strategy of swimming and flying.