What are rough lift and drag coefficient values for a two winged insect in flight?
This question is not as simple as it looks. Insect wings are essentially flat plates, and if they were to be held rigid they would generate little lift and much drag. These parameters are however irrelevant, because insects fly with a complex flapping motion. Quote from Science 18 June 1999: Vol. 284. no. 5422, pp. 1954 – 1960 Wing Rotation and the Aerodynamic Basis of Insect Flight Michael H. Dickinson, Fritz-Olaf Lehmann, Sanjay P. Sane The wingstroke of an insect is typically divided into four kinematic portions: two translational phases (upstroke and downstroke), when the wings sweep through the air with a high angle of attack, and two rotational phases (pronation and supination), when the wings rapidly rotate and reverse direction. The unsteady mechanisms that have been proposed to explain the elevated performance of insect wings typically emphasize either the translational or rotational phases of wing motion. The first unsteady effect to be identified was a rotational mechanism t
