Bruno A. Roccia, Sergio Preidikman, and Fernando G.
Flores
Numerical study of the unsteady
aerodynamics of rotating seeds

Abstract—Over millions of years of evolution, most of plants
have developed specific mechanisms that allows them to
increase its population spread: their fruits or seeds may have
“organs” that enable them to generate enough lift to stay aloft,
for a while, as they fall. Those seeds describing a rotational
motion, called samaras, are perhaps the most simple, stable and
efficient flying devices designed by nature. In this paper, we
present a well-suited numerical tool for studying the
aerodynamics of rotating seeds. The proposed simulation
framework is based on a modified version of the well-known
unsteady vortex-lattice method (UVLM) coupled with a
kinematics model previously developed by the authors of this
paper. In order to test the computational code, validate the
aerodynamic model and set limitations of the model, we
successfully reproduced a classic well-documented problem: a
two-blade rotor in hover. Finally, we present numerical results
related to the aerodynamics of a rotating seed in its descending
phase.
Resumen—A lo largo de millones de años de evolución, ciertas
especies vegetales han desarrollado estrategias de diseminación
para aumentar su población: sus frutos o semillas poseen
“órganos” que les permiten generar suficiente fuerza de
sustentación como para mantenerse en vuelo durante un
razonable período de tiempo mientras caen. Las semillas que al
caer ejecutan un movimiento de autorrotación son llamadas
sámaras y son, quizás, las “aviadoras” más simples, estables y
eficientes que la naturaleza ha creado . En este trabajo se
presenta el desarrollo de una herramienta de simulación
numérica que permite estudiar la aerodinámica asociada al
movimiento de autorrotación exhibido por las sámaras. El
modelo aerodinámico utilizado está basado en una versión
modificada del método de red de vórtices no lineal e
inestacionario (UVLM). El movimiento del apéndice a modo de
ala (esto es, la superficie sustentadora) de la semilla
autorrotante se describe utilizando un modelo cinemático
desarrollado con anterioridad por los autores de este trabajo.
Con el fin de verificar el código computacional desarrollado,
validar la utilización del modelo aerodinámico adoptado y
determinar sus límites, en lo que concierne a su aplicación al
estudio de semillas autorrotantes, se reprodujo un problema
muy bien documentado en la literatura: el referido a un rotor
en vuelo suspendido (hovering) que alcanza el estado
estacionario. En la parte final de este trabajo, como caso de
estudio, se presentan resultados numéricos concernientes a la
aerodinámica de la semilla rotante de arce.
Index Terms— flying seeds, samaras, autorotation,
aerodynamics, UVLM.
I. IINTRODUCTION
n recent decades, different research groups around the world
have addressed the difficult task to study and understand the
subjacent physics that characterizes the flight at small scales.
Despite constant advances in this area, many of they
attributed to Dickinson’s team and the Group of Animal
 from the sharp edges; iv) the position and shape of these
Flight led by Ellington, there are still many questions without
a final answer [1]. The development of micro-air-vehicles
(MAVs) with similar capabilities to those showed by flying
creatures is, nowadays, a very active research area. An
alternative to MAV-like flapping wings is based on the
simplicity with which almost all plants and trees disperse
their seeds over large distances [2],[3]. Among the dispersal
modes exhibited by seeds and flying fruits, the most
interesting one, from an engineering point of view, is the
spinning flight [4]. The seeds that execute a rotary motion as
they descend to the ground are known as samaras, and are
perhaps, the most simple, stable and efficient “fliers”
conceived by nature. Moreover, this kind of flight is an
example of elegance and balance; where gravitational
potential energy becomes into rotational kinetic energy
perpetuating an aerodynamically stable helical descent.
Early studies related to rotating seeds date back to the 50s
and were oriented to analyze the autorotation mechanism.
Subsequently, several works about morphological features
(e.g., roughness, airfoil shape, mass center, etc) of samaras
were published [5],[6].
On aerodynamics, Isaac Newton was the first to describe
the falling free motion of a body immersed in a fluid
medium. However, it was Maxwell, in 1854, who led the first
systematic study about the autorotation mechanism [7]. In
spite of the early Maxwell’s work, it was not until the second
half of the 20th century that the autorotation phenomenon
caught the attention of the scientific community [8]-[11].
Later, Lentink et al. [12] used a dynamically scaled model of
a maple seed in order to study the three-dimensional flow
around it. They found the presence of a leading-edge vortex
(LEV) as one of the main mechanisms of lift production.
Lentink’s team pointed out that: the LEV is a convergent
solution in the context of natural flight, both in animals and
insects as well as in plants. Varshney et al. [13] studied
another phenomenon, poorly understood, related to the flight
of samaras; the transition phase from rest to steady gyration
motion.
From a numerical point of view, Andronov et al. [14] and
Mittal et al. [15] has been carried out dynamic and
aerodynamic studies on flat-plates undergoing an
autorotation motion. Despite these efforts, there are still
several questions related to the aerodynamic/dynamic
behavior of these flying structures.
In this paper, we present an enlarged version of the
unsteady vortex-lattice method for the study of nonlinear
aerodynamics of rotating seeds. The aerodynamic model
takes into account all possible aerodynamic interferences and
allows us to predict: i) the flowfield around the samara’s
wing; ii) the spatial-temporal vorticity distribution attached
to the seed; iii) the vorticity distribution in the wakes emitted
wakes; and v) the unsteady loads acting on the samara’s m Mass 0.058 g
Ω Angular velocity 977 rpm
blade. VD Descent rate 0.82 m/seg
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, an aerodynamic β Cone angle 23.7º
study of Rotating seeds by means of an UVLM involving a αg Geometric angle of attack 1.17º
free deforming wake in the time domain, time-dependent
geometries and largely attached flows is unavailable in the For a detailed description of the kinematical parameters
literature, and it is the focus of the present work. involved in the flight of samaras, the reader may consult
[16].
II.KINEMATIC MODEL The position and velocity of an arbitrary point P belonging
to the seed can be expressed as follows (see Fig. 2),
The computational model adopted in this work to study the
aerodynamics of rotating seeds is based on the maple seed R P  R 0  r,
(griseum pax) morphology [6]. For reasons concerning to the (1)
VP  VD nˆ 3  ω r,
aerodynamic model, the surfaces that define the nut as well
as the blade (lifting surface) of the seed were discretized by where R0 is the position vector of the origin of frame B, r is a
using simple quadrilateral elements with four nodes (see Fig. the vector position fixed to the body frame B, n̂3 is a unitary
1).
vector parallel to a vertical line, and ω is a skew-symmetric
Leading edge tensor associated with the axial vector ω   nˆ 3 .

n̂1
n̂ 2
Motion N
Mass center Trailing edge n̂3
direction
RC cmax R0
b̂1 b̂ 3
B
b̂ 2
r
a R
L
P
Fig. 1. Spatial geometry of seed, a) picture of a real samara [6], b)
computational model built in MATLAB. Fig. 2. Kinematics of a maple seed while descending.

The reference frames used to study the rotation motion of
a flying seed are, commonly, two: i) a Newtonian or inertial
frame N   nˆ 1 , nˆ 2 , nˆ 3  , and ii) a body fixed frame located at
the rotation center (RC) of the seed and denoted by
 1 2 3 
B  bˆ , bˆ , bˆ . The orientation of the body fixed frame, B,
with respect to the inertial frame is achieved by means of a
rotation representation based on Euler angles. The sequence
utilized is a 3–2–1 defined by: i) the angle, Ωt, generated by
the constant angular velocity associated to the rotational
motion of the seed, Ω; ii) the cone angle, β; and iii) the
geometric angle of attack, αg.
In Table I, we present the values concerning to the main
morphological and kinematical parameters for the maple seed
adopted as study case.
TABLE I
MORPHOLOGICAL AND KINEMATICAL PARAMETERS FOR THE GRISEUM PAX
Parameter values
S Wing area
L
AR
Wing length
Aspect ratio
III. AERODYNAMIC MODEL
In this work, we used an enlarged and modified version of
the general method known as unsteady vortex-lattice method.
This method can be applied to three-dimensional lifting and
non-lifting flows. The surface of the body may undergo arbitrary
time-dependent deformation, and it can execute any type of
maneuver in the space surrounded by moving air. The flow
around the full body, i.e. the nut and the blade of the seed, is
assumed to be irrotational and incompressible over the entire
flowfield, except surrounding regions of the solid boundaries
of the body and wakes. As a result of the relative motion
between the body and the fluid, vorticity is generated in a
thin region surrounding the surface of the body (the boundary
layer). Part of this vorticity is shed from the sharp edges and
forms the wakes. We consider the boundary layers and wakes
as zero-thickness sheets of vorticity.
The proposed model considers a flow of an incompressible
fluid characterized by a very high Reynolds number. The
governing equation is the well-known Laplace’s equation of
continuity for incompressible and irrotational flows:
3.04 cm2
3.62 cm
4.33
 2  x, t   0 (1)
where ψ (x,t) is the velocity potential function, which is valid
in the whole irrotational and incompressible fluid domain
(outside of the boundary layers and the wakes), x is the
position vector and t is time.
The time dependence is introduced into Laplace’s equation
by the boundary conditions. In the fluid domain the vorticity
field and the velocity field V co-exist.
In the case of a finite straight vortex segment of circulation
(t) the velocity associated can be computed by using the
following discrete version of the Biot-Savart law:
 t
ω  x1
V  x, t   ω   eˆ1  eˆ 2  
4  ω 
2 2
ω  x1 2
where x1 and x2 are the position vectors of the point where
the velocity are computed relative to the ends of the straight
vortex segment, ê1 and ê 2 unit vectors associated to x1 and x2
vectors, and ω  x1  x 2 .
For a field point on or very near the vortex segment itself
or its extension, ω is or nearly is parallel to r1. This causes
the behavior of V  x,t  to be troublesome. In order to
circumvent this bad behavior, Eq. (2) was slightly modified
by introducing the quantity  ω , where δ is the “cutoff
radius”. Standard procedures use a range for δ between 10
and 25% of the smallest of the panel dimensions [17].
A. Discretization of the vortex sheets
In the unsteady vortex-lattice method, we replace the
bound-vortex sheets by a lattice of short, straight vortex
segments of circulation i ( t). These segments divide the
surface of the seed’s nut and seed’s blade into a number of
elements of area (panels) (see Fig. 3). The model is
completed by joining free vortex lines, representing the free-
vortex sheets, to the bound-vortex lattice along the edges of
separation; such as the trailing edge and wing tip of the
lifting surface.
Aerodynamic node
2 3
Gj
Detail
1 4
1 ω1 2 the current numerical tool, which implements the
ω4
Gj ω2
4 3
ω3
Fig. 3. Discretization of the bound-vortex sheets representing the seed’s nut
and blade.
B. Boundary conditions
The governing equation of the problem is complemented
with the following boundary conditions:
1) Regularity at infinity: this condition requires that all
disturbances due to a moving body in a fluid, initially at rest,
decay away from body and its wakes.
2) The non-penetration condition: it is applied over the
entire boundary of the solid immersed in the fluid. This
condition also called of impermeability requires that the
normal component of the velocity of all fluid particles
relative to the body surface must be zero on the body surface:
 V  VB  VW  VP   nˆ  0 (3)
where V is the freestream velocity, VB is the velocity
associate with the bound-vortex lattice, VW is the velocity
associated with the free-vortex lattice , n̂ is the unit vector
normal to the body surface, and VP was defined in Eq. (1).
(2) Because the vortex sheets are replaced by vortex lattices,
the no penetration condition given by Eq. (3) is only satisfied
at one point in each panel; these are called control points
(CPs), and they are located at the centroid of the corners of
each panel (see Fig. 3).
In order to reduce the dimension of the problem, each
panel belonging to the bound lattice is considered to be
surrounded by a closed loop vortex of constant circulation,
Gj  t  .
C. Aerodynamics loads
The aerodynamics loads on the lifting surface are
computed as follows: i ) for each element the pressure jump
at the control point is computed with the unsteady Bernoulli
equation (4); ii ) the force in each element is computed as the
product of the pressure jump times the element area times the
normal unit vector; iii ) the resultant forces and moments are
computed as the vector summation of the forces and
moments produced by each element.
 1 p  x, t 
  x, t   V  x, t   V  x, t    H  t (4)
t 2 
where V(x,t) is the absolute velocity, the spatial gradient of
ψ , p(x,t) is the unknown pressure, ρ is the constant density of the
fluid, and H is the energy per mass unit which is a function of
time.
nˆ j For a detailed mathematical formulation of the unsteady
lattice-vortex method, the reader may consult [18]-[20].
CPj
IV. NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS
In this section, we present a series of results obtained with
formulations described in Sections II and III. The code was
written in FORTRAN 90 and compiled to run in Windows
platforms. Automatic optimization options, which are
specific for Intel processors, have been used to achieve
higher performance. For all cases, the code was run on a
desktop computer with an i5 processor, RAM DDR3 of 4 GB,
and a hard disk of 2 TB.
A. Validations
In order to verify, validate and determine the limitations of
the adopted aerodynamic model, we present the reproduction
of two well-known problems. The first one consists of a flat
plate immersed in a low subsonic flow, and the second one is
the case of a two-blade rotor in hover that reaches the steady
state. 2 2
y/b = 0.5 y/b = 0.68
1) Flat plate (AR = 1) 1.5 1.5

In this Subsection we consider the case of a rectangular 1 1

ΔCP

ΔCP
wing characterized by an aspect ratio AR = 1. The wing
0.5 0.5
begins impulsively to move at constant velocity. Figures 4a
and 4b show the normal force coefficient CN and the moment 0 0
coefficient CM for different values of the angle of attack (at -0.5
0 0.5 1 -0.50 0.5 1
steady state regime). The current numerical results are x/c x/c
compared against experimental data reported by 2 2
Belotserkovskii [21] and with numerical values published by y/b = 0.80 y/b = 0.89
Konstandinopoulos et al. [22], showing in all cases an 1.5 1.5
excellent agreement. 1 1

ΔCP
ΔCP
1 0.4 0.5 0.5

0.8 0 0
0.3
0.6 -0.5 -0.5
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
CM
CN

0.2 x/c x/c

0.4
2 0.35
0.1
0.2 y/b = 0.96
1.5
0 0 0.3
0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20 1
ΔCP
α [º] α [º]

CL
Konstandinopoulos et al. [22] Belotserkovskii [21] Current 0.5
0.25
Fig. 4. a) Normal force coefficient, b) moment coefficient. 0

2) Two-blade rotor in hover -0.5

In this Subsection, we consider the experiment studied by
Caradonna and Tung [23]. A two-blade rotor with an aspect
ratio AR = 6, where blades are made up of an NACA 0012
profile and are untwisted and untapered with a precone of
0.5º, in which the chord length is 7.5 in. The collective pitch
angle of the blade is 8º and the angular speed is 1250 RPM
(Revolutions Per Minute). Experimental results are reported
for sections that are located at the 50, 68, 80, 89 and 96% of
the blade length.
In Figures 5a-c, we present the distribution of the
coefficient of pressure difference along the dimensionless
chord, ΔCp vs. x/c. Figure 5d shows the distribution of a lift
coefficient along the dimensionless span, CL vs. y/b. For
comparison, reference values obtained from experimental
measurements are also presented. It is observed that all the
ΔCp distributions are in very good agreement, where small
differences are attributed to the discretization of the blade
that comprises only 12 panels in chord-wise direction. With
respect to the CL distribution, although the results are in good
agreement, some discrepancies are realized, which are
attributed to some compressibility effects, due to the outer
region of the blade is in a mid-subsonic range, and the tip
vortex, in the simulation wakes are only emitted from the
trailing edge, but not from the tip.
0 0.5 1
0.2
0.4 0.6 0.8 1
x/c y/b
Caradonna and Tung (trend) Current
Caradonna and Tung [23] Current (trend)
Fig. 5. Comparison of the ΔCp and CL distributions of a two-blade rotor.
B. Aerodynamics of a samara in descending motion
In this Subsection, we present some numerical results for
the aerodynamics of an untwisted maple seed while
descending to the ground. Both, kinematical and
morphological parameters for the seed considered here can
be found in Table I. Even though Lentink et al. [12] showed
that LEV plays a fundamental role in the seed flight, it is not
included in this work. Despite this phenomenon can be easily
incorporated into the model through the on/off mechanism
developed by Roccia et al. [16], severe numerical
instabilities occur when the number of revolutions simulated
are more than one.
The setup of the numerical experiment presented below
consist of: i) a fully spatial discretization of the seed with
500 aerodynamic panels (300 for the blade and 200 for the
nut); and ii) four complete revolutions of the seed, i.e. 240
time steps. In order to have uniform elements in the free-
vortex lattice, both the aerodynamic model as well as the
kinematic model are nondimensionalized by using the
following characteristic variables of length LC, time TC and
density ρC:

A
LC   0.87741 mm,
NP
1 1
TC   7.6774  10 4 seg,
 N ps (5)
C   air  1.00  10 kg/mm , and
9 3
L
VC  C  1142.85 mm/seg.
TC
Where A is the area of all the aerodynamic panels in the
bound lattice, NP is the number of aerodynamic panels, and
Nps is the number of time steps.
Figure 6a shows
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we developed the dynamic equations of
motion for a flapping-wing micro-air-vehicle. The dynamic
model was formulated by using Lagrange’s equations for
constrained systems. Moreover, this model takes into account
the contribution of the inertial effects of the wings on the
central body (fuselage) of the MAV, effect that has been
neglected in most of the works found in the literature.
The numerical integration of the dynamical equations was
performed successfully by means of a modified scheme
proposed in this work. This modified scheme consists of the
Hamming’s fourth-order predictor-corrector method coupled
with a post-stabilization procedure based on the coordinate
projection.
The model was validated by comparing its results with the
simple formula for free fall found in any basic physics
textbook. In addition, we presented results for the flight
dynamics of a MAV in hovering and, although the
aerodynamic and dynamic models still are decoupled, we
obtained encouraging results.
Currently, we are developing an algorithm to combine the
aerodynamic and dynamic model as a single dynamical
system for solving all the governing equations through the
numerical procedure proposed in this work.
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