• September 19, 2016, 4:00 p.m.
  • Professor Haibo Dong , Ph.D
  • University of Virginia, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dept.
  • 117A Surge Building
  • Faculty Host:  Dr. Seongim Choi

Flapping with flexible appendages is a hallmark of flying and swimming in nature, but achieving biological levels of aero/hydro-performance in bio-inspired robots design has proven elusive. This is due to our lack of understanding of the fundamental physics of the bio-locomotion and experimental and computational difficulties in studying live flying and swimming animals. In this talk, a combined experimental and computational approach will be introduced for studying unsteady flow of freely flying and swimming animals. High-speed photogrammetry system and accurate 3D data reconstruction are used to measure the kinematics of animal body and appendages with extraordinary details. A model reduction tool is developed to extract the dominant kinematical components for analysis and computational modeling. An in-house, Cartesian grid based immersed boundary solver is then used to simulate corresponding unsteady flows in all their complexity. Analysis of vortex dynamics and aero/hydro-performance of various flying animals such as hummingbird, dragonfly and cicada as well as swimming animals such as trout, jack fish and orca will be showcased and discussed in this talk. Discovery of the new bio-inspired flow sciences are expected to bring new insights on the design of next generation bio-inspired robotic systems.

Bio-Sketch

Dr. Haibo Dong is currently an associate professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Virginia. He joined UVA in August 2012. Prior to his position at UVA, Dr. Dong was an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Wright State University. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering from UCLA in 2003. After completing his doctorate, he spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher at the George Washington University on an ONR sponsored MURI program. His current research involves computational fluid dynamics (CFD), fluid-structure interaction, low speed aero/hydrodynamics, flow visualization, flying and swimming, and biological fluid dynamics in nature. His research is currently supported by NSF, AFOSR, and ONR MURI program.  Dong is the recipient of a number of national and society awards including the NSF CAREER award, the AIAA Foundation Abe Zarem Educator award, and the APS/DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion best video award etc. More information can be found from http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/FSRG/