On the role of tail in stability and energetic cost of bird flapping flight

Migratory birds travel over impressively long distances. Consequently, they have to adopt flight regimes being both efficient—in order to spare their metabolic resources—and robust to perturbations. This paper investigates the relationship between both aspects, i.e., energetic performance and stability, in flapping flight of migratory birds. Relying on a poly-articulated wing morphing model and a tail-like surface, several families of steady flight regime have been identified and analysed. These families differ by their wing kinematics and tail opening. A systematic parametric search analysis has been carried out, in order to evaluate power consumption and cost of transport. A framework tailored for assessing limit cycles, namely Floquet theory, is used to numerically study flight stability. Our results show that under certain conditions, an inherent passive stability of steady and level flight can be achieved. In particular, we find that progressively opening the tail leads to passively stable flight regimes. Within these passively stable regimes, the tail can produce either upward or downward lift. However, these configurations entail an increase of cost of transport at high velocities penalizing fast forward flight regimes. Our model-based predictions suggest that long range flights require a furled tail configuration, as confirmed by field observations, and consequently need to rely on alternative mechanisms to stabilize the flight.