Every member of the BIRD Lab takes ownership of their projects, leading the research from start to finish, with guidance and support from Christina and other members of the lab.
Below are a few samples of the current projects in the lab. For the most up to date details please refer to our recent Publications or reach out to Dr. Christina Harvey.
Kaleb Bordner is exploring morphology changes as a control input. He is using aerodynamic modeling to predict the effects of avian-like morphological changes, such as wing sweep, wing dihedral, wing extension, wing airfoil incidence angle, wing camber, tail spread, and tail incidence. With these findings, he will develop a flight controller capable of shifting geometric configurations to optimally maneuver a morphing aircraft.
Rowan Glenn and Lucas Dahlke have combined forces and are extracting the geometry of bird wings in collaboration with the UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology to advance our understanding of avian wing aerodynamic characteristics. Their work was presented at AIAA SciTech in 2024!
Lucas Dahlke is currently working on using XFoil, an aerodynamic solver, to run through a large avian airfoil dataset. This tool will help us understand the underlying morphology of avian airfoils.
Francisco Jackson is performing a component analysis on morphing wings using motion capture data to extract kinematic equations that can inform more complex models for morphing wings.
For more details: https://engineering.ucdavis.edu/news/engineering-animation-hawk-wing-research-fuses-science-movie-magic
Alex Kerlee is validating Flight Stream against experimental data of the NACA 64418 airfoil. Afterwards, she will be working on stability derivatives and various over the wing distributed propeller formations.
Dr. Alfonso Martinez is investigating the aerodynamics of unsteady maneuvers to expand current steady flight dynamics models. He uses high-resolution imaging (motion capture and photogrammetry) to extract the flight trajectory and 3D geometry of different raptor species performing perching maneuvers. The generated data will be used to quantify the aerodynamic characteristics of specific avian configurations through the maneuver, supported by flow simulations of variable-fidelity (CFD and vortex models).