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Insects are the most diverse natural flyers in nature, being able to hover and perform agile manoeuvres. Dragon- flies in particular are aggressive flyers, attaining accelerations of up to 4g. Flight in all insects requires demanding aerodynamic and inertial loads be overcome. It has been proposed that resonance is a primary mechanism for reducing energy costs associated with flapping flight, by storing energy in an elastic thorax and releasing it on the following half-stroke. Certainly in insect flight motors dominated by inertial loads, such a mechanism would be extremely beneficial. However in highly manoeuvrable, aerodynamically dominated flyers, such as the dragonfly, the use of elastic storage members requires further investigation. We show that employing resonant mechanisms in a real world configuration produces minimal energy savings that are further reduced by 50 to 133% across the
operational flapping frequency band of the dragonfly. Using a simple harmonic oscillator analysis to represent the dynamics of a dragonfly, we further demonstrate a reduction in manoeuvring limits of ∼1.5 times for a system
employing elastic mechanisms. This is in contrast to the potential power reductions of √2/2 from regulating
aerodynamics via active wing articulation. Aerodynamic means of energy storage provides flexibility between an energy efficient hover state and a manoeuvrable state capable of large accelerations. We conclude that active wing articulation is preferable to resonance for aerodynamically dominated natural flyers.
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