  Damselflies show abrupt, darting flight, which is the envy of aero-engineers.
This amazing ability is used both to capture prey and, by males, to establish
territories that can attract females. In this work, high-resolution, high-speed
videos of a damselfly (Hetaerina Americana) in darting flight were obtained
using a photogrammetry system. Using a 3D subdivision surface reconstruction
methodology, the damselfly's wing deformation and kinematics were modeled and
reconstructed from those videos. High fidelity simulations were then carried
out in order to understand vortex formation in both near-field and far-field of
damselfly wings and examine the associated aerodynamic performance. A Cartesian
grid based sharp interface immersed boundary solver was used to handle such
flows in all their complexity.
