Investigation of the effect of hemolymph on biochemical behavior of dragonfly wing veins

Document Type : full paper

Authors

• Azam Zare ¹
• Saleh Mobasseri ¹
• Hamed Rajabi ²

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran

² Institute of Zoology, Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

Abstract

Dragonfly wings are composite materials with impressive mechanical performance. This biological material in addition to a high strength to weight ratio, has a high fatigue strength and can support forces applied to the wings in flight. There is a series of passive mechanisms in dragonfly wings, such as changes in the thickness of the veins, vein joints, material gradient, corrugation and hemolymph (blood) flow. Only a few studies, however, have focused on the blood flow. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of hemolymph flow on the deformation of wing veins during flight. In this paper, for the first time, we use a computational solid-fluid interaction analysis to model the hemolymph in the veins in both stationary and moving states. We analyze the effect of hemolymph on the bending stiffness, torsional stiffness and  buckling behavior of a modelled vein. The behavior of the vein is simulated using the computational fluid dynamic and acoustic methods in the finite element software package ABAQUS. The behavior of the vein is assumed to be linear elastic, and hemolymph is assumed to be a non-Newtonian incompressible fluid in both stationary and nonstationary states. Numerical results indicate that the presence of hemolymph in the vein increases its strength against bending, torsion and buckling deformations. The flow of hemolymph also increases the bending.

Keywords

• Dragonfly wing
• vein
• hemolymph
• biomechanics

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