New model on flapping flight

Nature has produced many formidable flyers and it is tempting to think that evolution has shaped them to be the ultimate flying machines. During the past half-century simple models for estimating flight performance of aircraft have been adopted to also represent animal flight.

However, in a new study, Marco Klein Heerenbrink, Christoffer Johansson and Anders Hedenström show that the aerodynamic efficiency of flying vertebrates has previously been overestimated by ignoring the effects of flapping wings - results that have implications for our understanding of optimal flight behaviour in animals and the use of flapping wings for propulsion in general.

To the paper: "Power of the wingbeat: modelling the effects of flapping wings in vertebrate flight".