Drones and fans could potentially be made quieter by the results of a study of hummingbird wing beat. A team of, among others, Dutch researchers is succeeded to find out the precise origin of the wing sound for the first time in a flying animal.
The hummingbird is known for its low ‘hum’ tone, a sound that comes from its fast wing beat. How the grand piano makes that distinctive sound has now become clear.
Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Eindhoven company Sorama and the American Stanford University have measured the wing noise of six hummingbirds when they drank sugar water while flying from a fake flower. They used twelve high-speed cameras and 2,176 microphones.
The results show that a hummingbird’s soft and complex wings make noise in the same way that simpler insect wings do. Unlike other bird species, the hummingbird generates a strong upward aerodynamic force during both the upward wing beat and the downward wing beat.
According to the researchers, the new insights can contribute to making drones, vacuum cleaners, fans and airplanes quieter. “If you know how an animal’s complex aerodynamic forces produce sound, you can use that knowledge to make flying or moving devices that generate complex forces quieter,” they write.
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