  Wing flexibility plays an essential role in the aerodynamic performance of
insects due to the considerable deformation of their wings during flight under
the impact of inertial and aerodynamic forces. These forces come from the
complex wing kinematics of insects. In this study, both wing structural
dynamics and flapping wing motion are taken into account to investigate the
effect of wing deformation on the aerodynamic efficiency of a bumblebee in
tethered flight. A fluid-structure interaction solver, coupling a mass-spring
model for the flexible wing with a pseudo-spectral code solving the
incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, is implemented for this purpose. We
first consider a tethered bumblebee flying in laminar flow with flexible wings.
Compared to the rigid model, flexible wings generate smaller aerodynamic forces
but require much less power. Finally, the bumblebee model is put into a
turbulent flow to investigate its influence on the force production of flexible
wings.
