Use your hand to push a handful of air. Now imagine you have a vortex and push that with your hand. You're moving more air, more reaction mass. Isn't that what they mean in the article, or they just don't say at all? The vortex ties air together into a momentary 'thing' that has more mass than the smaller handful of air. I doubt the increase in reaction mass at insect reynolds numbers does much, but I guess it all adds up with rapid wing-beats. The viscous drag against the larger pulse of air moving through the surrounding air is a good thing too if you're pushing either down or backwards or both to get thrust and lift. Probably would work even better on a larger scale - like for human powered flight. Flonk... Flonk... flonk...
-----Original Message----- From: Harry Veeder [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 1:52 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: Secrets of bee flight revealed The article mentions the forces provided by the vortices...but the origin of the "added-mass force" is not explained. quote: > Lastly, there is another peculiar force known as > added-mass force which peaks at the ends of each stroke and is related > to acceleration as the wings direction changes. Harry Rick Monteverde wrote: > Conceptually that means more stuff to push off of. <???> > > These kinds of wings create vortices of air which feature increased > mass and resistance to downward/rearward movement than a similar > surface would encounter while slicing through the medium in a more > laminar mode. Probably get increased stability too. >
