BIOMECHANICAL ASPECTS OF THE INSECT WING - AN ANALYSIS USING THE FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD

Insect wings appear as highly functional and largely optimized mechani cal constructions. A series of stabilizing constructional elements hav e been 'designed' to cope with loading during flight. One such element is the expenditure of material in constructing the wing, i.e. the vei n system of the wing and its arrangement. It functions like a zig-zag folding framework which stiffens the wing against aerodynamic bending moments. To quantify the quality of material distribution, models of a dragonfly wing and of a fly wing were calculated using the finite ele ment method (FEM). (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.