Many species of kelp change their blade shape depending on the current they experience. In fast-moving waters, the kelp grows flat blades, but when the water around them is slower, Keep reading
Tag: flutter
Pigeon Flutter
Birds are well-known for their vocalizations, but this isn’t their only way to produce noise. A new study on crested pigeons finds that the birds’ wings produce distinctive high and Keep reading
Flag Flapping
Everyone has watched a flag flutter in the breeze, but you may not have given much thought to it. One of the earliest scientists to consider the problem was Lord Keep reading
Fluttering Feathers
Birds do not always vocalize in order to make their songs. The male African broadbill, shown in the top video above, makes a very distinctive brreeeet in its flight displays, but Keep reading
How Air Dancers Dance
Air dancers–those long fabric tubes with fans blowing into the bottom–are a popular way for shops to draw attention. They bend and flutter, shake and kink, all due to the Keep reading
Flapping Flags
Sometimes structural forces and aerodynamic forces combine to produce instabilities. One of the most common and familiar examples of this, a flag flapping in the breeze, remains extremely complex to Keep reading
Hummingbirds Singing with their Tail Feathers
Aeroelastic flutter occurs when fluid mechanical forces and structural forces get coupled together, one feeding the other. Usually, we think of it as a destructive mechanism, but, for hummingbirds, it’s Keep reading
Flapping Elastic Straws
One of the interesting challenges in fluid dynamics is the coupling of aerodynamic forces with structural forces. This could be the result of external flow, as with aeroelastic flutter on Keep reading
Why Tacoma Narrows Bridge Fell
We’ve talked about aeroelastic flutter and the demise of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge before, but this explanation from Minute Physics does a nice job of outlining the process simply. As noted in the Keep reading
Examples of Flutter
Aeroelasticity is the study of the interaction of structural and aerodynamic forces on an object, and its most famous example is flutter, which occurs when the aerodynamic forces on an object Keep reading