Albatrosses and Sailboats: Wind Propulsion From a Transfer-of-Momentum Standpoint
Friday, May 3, 2024 @ 2:30 p.m.
3110 Etcheverry Hall
Dr. Gabriel Bousquet – Staff Engineer, Aquasatellite
E201 Seminar Series
Abstract: Albatrosses are truly fascinating nature-made robots: they extract their propulsive energy from horizontal winds in a maneuver called dynamic soaring, and travel an impressive distance (5000 km/week) by “riding the winds”. Their flight is barely more strenuous than rest. While thermal soaring, exploited by birds of prey and sports gliders, consists of simply remaining in updrafts, extracting energy from horizontal winds necessitates redistributing momentum across the wind shear layer, by means of an intricate flight strategy. In this talk I will combine numerical models and pen-and-paper approaches to describe the mechanics of dynamic soaring. Two limiting cases are of particular interest: the “thin shear” limit is where albatrosses operate. The “thick shear” limit, less studied, has counter-intuitive properties. Throughout the talk, I’ll draw the connection between dynamic soaring, sailing, and wind energy in general.
Biography: Dr. Gabriel Bousquet is Staff Engineer at Aquasatellite, a Mountain View, CA-based start-up that ambitions to deliver sensors and intelligence anywhere, anytime, around the oceans. Aquasatellite is developing a large fleet of long range, autonomous underwater vehicles. Dr. Bousquet is in charge of guidance, navigation and controls. Prior to Aquasatellite, he was Senior Engineer on the Heaviside division at Kittyhawk, a pioneering start-up in the development of Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft. Dr. Bousquet designed the Heaviside propellers. He was also in charge of key aspects of the flight controller. Dr. Bousquet’s proudest moment there was increasing Heaviside’s safe takeoff weight by over 5% with a single, well thought-out, line of flight-controller code. Heaviside was a finalist of the 2021 Robert J. Collier Trophy, the most prestigious award for aerospace achievement. Dr. Bousquet holds a PhD. in Mechanical and Ocean Engineering from MIT. His academic awards include 2018 ICRA best paper finalist, the Amar. G. Bose Research Grant, the Link Ocean Engineering Fellowship, and the Fulbright Science and Technology Fellowship.
Hosted by: Professor Reza Alam, reza.alam@berkeley.edu