AS5590 Dynamic Soaring

Ranjith M., AE, ranjith.m@iitm.ac.in

IIT Madras

Jan-July 2021

Lecture: Introduction to Dynamic Soaring

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Observations on Dynamic Soaring
We will start with what S.E. Peal [1] saw in a village
named Sapakhati, Sibsagor district, Assam: Peal
reported that
We have two steady winds here, from
north east and west south west, and in one
of these the bird rise to great heights, and
can be seen as small specks up in the blue,
and watched with telescope, going round
and round, motionless otherwise. The fol-
lowing data are trust worthy: The birds
weigh from 20 to 40 lbs; spread of wings,
10 to 12 feet; stand 3 to 5 feet high; speed
while flying or soaring, about 15 to 35 miles
per Ranjith
hour (estimated). AS5590 Dynamic Soaring
M., AE, ranjith.m@iitm.ac.in 2/ 18
They rise by flapping the wings. If there is no wind
they do not soar; they generally begin to soar at
100 to 200 feet elevation when above the level of
forest. In soaring they do not go in a right line, but
in large curves of a spiral that leans to leeward. At
each lap they can rise 10 to 20 feet but lose
position laterally of 20 to 50 feet leeward. The
soaring can go on without once flapping the wings
till the bird is almost out of sight.

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Several works in last fifty years have described
different trajectories that represent dynamic soaring
[2][3] [4]. Pennycuick gives a brief description of his
sighting of albatross flight in [2].
The very first day that I saw albatrosses at sea
was 26 November 1979, from the deck of the British
Antarctic Survey’s supply ship Bransfield, which was
steaming south from Rio to South Georgia at the
time in latitude 32 south, making 6m/s through the
water, directly against a headwind of 8 m/s.

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 Wandering Albatrosses appeared in the distance
far astern, catching up with the ship and overtaking
it. They were staying close to the surface most of
the time, pulling up a few meters from time to time,
but going back down, and continuing their prolonged
into-wind glide. They were not doing regular cyclic
maneuvers. They were not flapping their wings, and
it was obvious that they could go in any direction at
will, and that their performance was anything but
marginal. Later observations on the same voyage
showed albatrosses pulling up from near the surface
to 15 m when the wind gradient might conceivably
have been strong enough to keep them going with-
out losing airspeed up to 3 m (Pennycuick 1982).
None of this behavior was consistent with any vari-
ant of the classical theory.

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The important point in the above description is that
the albatross was flying very close to the surface
and pulling up only a few meters (about 15m). It
appeared as if the bird was not doing a regular
cyclic maneuver and appeared to be capable of
going in any direction. The above observation is
that of a downwind flight. However, upwind flight
has also been reported by [4] based on data from
instrumented albatross.

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A similar observation is given by Richardson [3]
I observed albatrosses soaring during a research
cruise to the South Atlantic off Cape Town, South
Africa in September 1997. It was surprising and
delightful to see them almost magically soar upwind
in wind speeds of 5–10 m/s (10–20 knots). The
albatrosses flew in a characteristic and distinctive
flight pattern consisting of a swooping motion where
each swoop was tightly coupled to a wave crest.
Each swoop began with a fast flight parallel to and
just above the windward side of a wave. This was
followed by a turn into the wind and climb of around
10–15 m, followed by a downwind descent towards
another wave and a turn parallel to the wave. The
typical time to complete a swoop was around 10 s.

These observations suggest that waves significantly influence

albatross flight in the ocean.
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And then we have from
’The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1798) by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (high school poem?)
‘It ate the food it ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.’
Isn’t that dynamic soaring ?

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Crosswind maneuver: In this flight pattern, the bird
travels at right angles to the wind, as illustrated in
Fig.1.

Figure 1: Cross wind travel

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There are four phases in this flight.
1 Albatross turns into wind
2 Ascends
3 turns for descend
4 descends
The cycle repeats, and the bird can fly crosswind a
long distance with hardly any flapping. That, the
net motion of bird is nearly in a direction
perpendicular to that of wind.

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1 Circumpolar maneuver: The bird performs an
upwind climb and descend downwind in this
maneuver, and the net travel is downwind, and
there is higher ground distance gained. Figure
2 illustrates this maneuver [5]. The bird can fly
about 40% faster than the wind in this case.
2 Upwind dynamic soaring: Observation in [4] on
upwind travel.

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 Figure 2: Down wind travel

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Explanation-Rayleigh

Looking at this from a fundamental level,

Rayleigh[6] gave the first explanation. There are
three possibilities involving flight path and wind
that is essential for such a flight:
Flight path is not horizontal
Wind is not horizontal
Wind is not uniform

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Explanation-Rayleigh

So which of the three could be the possible cause?

The first and second, in fact are true for
soaring or gliding flight.
Insufficient for explaining the trajectory taken
by those characterized by dynamic soaring
So, third case of nonuniform wind ?

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Soaring

(Thermal) soaring:
Vertical updraft
Regions of rising and descending air
Cannot sustain long flight
Equivalent to glide
Usually circling around for catching prey !
Hankin[7] gives a good account of observations
of soaring in and around city of Agra

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Explanation given by Lord Rayleigh [6]:
Consider two layers: one with wind speed VW
and other still air.
Let aircraft have a ground velocity V in same
direction as W
The airspeed below the shear layer is same as
ground speed V because there is no wind.
The airspeed above the shear layer when bird
sees headwind (flying against the wind) is
V + VW .

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 Figure 3: Rayleigh Dynamic soaring Cycle

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when the bird flies with the tailwind (that is
the flight is in the direction of the wind), the
airspeed above the shear layer is V − VW
after descend through the shear layer, the
speed changes to V , that is again an increase
by VW (Fig. 3)
In this maneuver, the airspeed of bird has
increased while ascending as well as descending.

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[1] S.E. Peal.
Soaring of birds.
Nature, 23:10–11, 1880.

[2] Colin J Pennycuick.

Modelling the flying bird, volume 5.
Elsevier, 2008.

[3] Philip L. Richardson.

How do albatrosses fly around the world without flapping
their wings?
Progress in Oceanography, 88(1-4):46–58, 2011.

[4] G Sachs, J Traugott, AP Nesterova, and F Bonadonna.

Experimental verification of dynamic soaring in
albatrosses.
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 Journal of Experimental Biology, 216(22):4222–4232,
2013.
[5] J Philip Barnes.
How flies the albatross–the flight mechanics of dynamic
soaring.
Technical report, SAE Technical Paper, 2004.

[6] Rayleigh (Lord).

The soaring of birds.
Nature, 27:534–535, 1883.

[7] Ernest Hanbury Hankin.

Animal flight: a record of observation.
Iliffe & Sons Limited, 1913.

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