Unsteady aerodynamics of micro drones for Offshore Wind Farm Monitoring

The aim of the project is to investigate, through bio-inspired fundamental research, a mechanism to exploit wind gusts to keep small flyers afloat. Recent work led by Viola and published in Nature (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0604-2), reveals that the dandelion exploits a highly porous wing to form a fluid vortex, which has never been observed before, and that slows down its descent velocity. It also re-vealed that the dandelion exploits wind gusts to gain altitude and slow down its de-scent. Computational fluid dynamics simulations will be undertaken to study the underlying principles of this uplifting mechanism and to underpin the design of a dandelion-inspired drone: the dandidrone.