2019/01/16 by Jean Rabault, Richard A. Fauli, Richard Andre Fauli +1 · 1 citation
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Biological dispersal #Biology #Biomimetic flight and propulsion mechanisms #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Curvature #Ecology #Geometry #Lift (data mining) #Mathematics #Physics #Sepal #Tree Root and Stability Studies #Wing #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.122.024501
arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1811.12221
openalex publication_date 2019/01/16 · arxiv created 2019/02/20 · arxiv updated 2019/02/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Appendages of seeds, fruits, and other diaspores (dispersal units) are essential for their wind dispersal, as they act as wings and enable them to fly. Whirling fruits generate an autogyrating motion from their sepals, a leaflike structure, which curve upwards and outwards, creating a lift force that counteracts gravitational force. The link of the fruit's sepal shape to flight performance, however, is as yet unknown. We develop a theoretical model and perform experiments for double-winged biomimetic 3D-printed fruits, where we assume that the plant has a limited amount of energy that it can convert into a mass to build sepals and, additionally, allow them to curve. Both hydrodynamic theory and experiments involving synthetic, double-winged fruits show that to produce a maximal flight time there is an optimal fold angle for the desiccated sepals. A similar sepal fold angle is found for a wide range of whirling fruits collected in the wild, highlighting that wing curvature can aid as an efficient mechanism for wind dispersal of seeds and may improve the fitness of their producers in the context of an ecological strategy.