Samik Bhattacharya
University of Central Florida, FL·Engineering
Birds land and take off by pitching their bodies up sharply while sweeping their wings with precision, which is something most small drones cannot do. Quadcopters, drones with four fixed rotors, dominate the market but have limited agility.
- Fields
Engineering
Physics
- Topics
bird flight
avian-inspired flight
flapping-wing UAV
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Measure how rapid pitch-up motions of the wing and tail change lift and drag on 3D-printed bird models near the ground, using a force sensor to capture instantaneous forces during simulated takeoff and landing.
- Map airflow around the bird models with particle image velocimetry, a laser-and-camera technique for measuring flow velocity, to track how vortices form and evolve during rapid starts and stops.
- Determine how vortices shed by the wing and tail together govern force production in ground-adjacent maneuvers, and use the measurements to build improved mathematical models of unsteady flow.
More about the research
Drones that flap their wings like birds are quieter and easier to maneuver, yet they remain underused because landing and takeoff require rapid changes in angle of attack, the tilt of the wing relative to the oncoming air. Most past research has looked at the main wings alone and ignored how the wings and the tail work together.
Why it matters
Small drones able to take off and land as nimbly as birds could help with disaster response, reconnaissance and package delivery. By identifying the airflow principles behind birds' near-ground maneuvers, this work could guide designs for agile flapping-wing drones, improve low-altitude flight safety, and support more efficient near-ground operations and drone manufacturing.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Aimy Wissa
Princeton University, NJ·Engineering
Identify the anatomical features and force-generating mechanisms that let flying fish taxi with only the tail fin in the water, using a comparative biomechanics approach combined with field and laboratory measurements.
Rajat Mittal
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Engineering
Extend the Force Partitioning Method, which splits drag into vortex, viscous and shear contributions, to turbulent flow over smooth, transitionally rough, fully rough and patchy walls using direct numerical simulations.
Bryan Schmidt
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Engineering
Design lattices of phononic subsurfaces, engineered material units placed under a surface, and use stability theory and direct numerical simulations to test whether they suppress turbulence-causing disturbances downstream and from varying directions.
The school
University of Central Florida: 15 labs on PI Pages, $285M a year on research, 290 research doctorates a year.
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