Hawk gust perturbation dataset

Dataset in support of " Aerodynamic response of a Red-tailed Hawk to discrete transverse gusts "

 A limiting factor in the design of smaller size uncrewed aerial vehicles is their inability
to navigate through gust-laden environments. As a result, engineers have turned towards bio-inspired
engineering approaches for gust mitigation techniques. In this study, the aerodynamics of a red-tailed
hawk’s response to variable-magnitude discrete transverse gusts was investigated. The hawk was flown
in an indoor flight arena instrumented by multiple high-speed cameras to quantify the 3D motion of the
bird as it navigated through the gust. The hawk maintained its flapping motion across the gust in all
runs; however, it encountered the gust at different points in the flapping pattern depending on the run
and gust magnitude. The hawk responded with a downwards pitching motion of the wing, decreasing
the wing pitch angle to between -20◦ and -5◦, and remained in this configuration until gust exit. The
wing pitch data was then applied to a lower-order aerodynamic model that estimated lift coefficients
across the wing. In gusts slower than the forward flight velocity (low gust ratio), the lift coefficient
increases at a low-rate, to a maximum of around 2 to 2.5. In gusts faster than the forward flight
velocity (high gust ratio), the lift coefficient initially increased rapidly, before increasing at a low-rate
to a value around 4 to 5. A flight dynamics model accounting only for the wing was then created to
obtain expected height change and compared to actual tracked values. A wing-only dynamic model
was insufficient to accurately describe the observed change in height, underestimating height change in
low gust ratio runs and overestimating height change in high gust ratio runs. This suggests a missing
factor not considered by a wing-only model. One potential factor is the tail response, which serves to
mitigate pitch changes through pitch angle and roll angle modulation.