Professors James Callis, Thomas Daniel, Martin Gouterman and Gamal Khalil of the University of Washington are supported by the Analytical and Surface Chemistry and Fluid Dynamics and Hydraulics Programs to develop the use of pressure sensitive-paint to study the dynamics of insect flight. The goal of this Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) is to map the pressure over an insect's wings in flight. The idea is to utilize a biocompatible, phosphorescent dye painted on the wings of a honeybee to report on the tiny pressure changes that evolve at high speed. A bank of violet LED's is used to excite the dye and a CCD imager captures two sequential images synchronized to the light source modulation. The instrumentation is first being tested in a wind tunnel that shows unstable flow around a square cylinder and, secondly, using a propeller system at low rotational velocity. While computational fluid dynamics calculations by others have predicted surface pressure maps over insect wings during flight, this data would provide some of the first experimental measurements for comparison.
The remote measurement of small pressure variations utilizing this spectroscopic-based method could have applications not only in understanding insect flight, but also for aerodynamic design of rockets, or micro air vehicles, for example. The work has implications for national security as well as space exploration, and many other possible applications.
