BIO: Dr. Haoxiang Luo is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he currently serves as the Department Chair. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Tsinghua University in China, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), all degrees in mechanical engineering. He had postdoctoral training at UCSD and George Washington University before he joined Vanderbilt University in 2007. Dr. Luo received the Doctoral New Investigator award from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund in 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in 2010, and the General H. H. Arnold Award from the AIAA Tennessee Section in 2013. He is a Fellow of ASME, an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and a member of APS. He is currently serving on the editorial board for the Journal of Fluids Engineering. Dr. Luo’s research areas include computational fluid dynamics, fluid-structure interaction, scientific computing, and applied math.

ABSTRACT: Hummingbirds are arguably the most agile flyers in nature. Studying the underlying physics of hummingbird flight may inspire the development of highly maneuverable micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). In recent years, we have developed high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to study the full-body aerodynamics and flight mechanics of hummingbirds, including hovering, cruise flight, and escape maneuvers. Our objective was to uncover the physical mechanisms that enable their remarkable agility and control. To achieve this, we reconstructed hummingbird wing kinematics from digitized high-speed videos of flight experiments and then used an immersed-boundary method to simulate the 3D unsteady aerodynamics. For unsteady maneuvers, we also modeled the flight dynamics involving pitch, yaw, and roll. In this talk, I will present several novel mechanisms uncovered through these simulations, including wing inertia-assisted body rotation and inertial cross-coupling—both of which contribute to the hummingbird's ability to execute rapid maneuvers.