The smallest flying insects often have bristled wings resembling feathers or
combs. We combined experiments and three-dimensional numerical simulations to
investigate the trade-off between wing weight and drag generation. In
experiments of bristled strips, a reduced physical model of the bristled wing,
we found that the elasto-viscous number indicates when reconfiguration occurs
in the bristles. Analysis of existing biological data suggested that bristled
wings of miniature insects lie below the reconfiguration threshold, thus
avoiding drag reduction. Numerical simulations of bristled strips showed that
there exist optimal numbers of bristles that maximize the weighted drag when
the additional volume due to the bristles is taken into account. We found a
scaling relationship between the rescaled optimal numbers and the dimensionless
bristle length. This result agrees qualitatively with and provides an upper
bound for the bristled wing morphological data analyzed in this study.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure