computeChemicalPower {afpt}

Convert mechanical power to chemical power

Description

Redundant after chemical power is now computed in all functions by default.

Computes the chemical power, i.e. the rate at which chemical energy is consumed, during flight. It takes into account the basal metabolic rate, and the energy needed by the flight muscles to provide the mechanical power required for flight.

Usage

## S3 method for class 'power.mechanical'
computeChemicalPower(power.mech, bird, ...)
## S3 method for class 'numeric'
computeChemicalPower(power.mech, bird, ...)

Arguments

power.mech

mechanical power (either numeric (W) or as an mechanical power object (class power.mechanical)

bird

object describing the relevant morphological parameters of the bird (or bat); this object should be created using the Bird constructor.

...

optional arguments (none yet)

Details

Chemical power is computed as

P_\mathrm{chem} = R(\frac{P_\mathrm{mech}}{\eta} + \mathrm{BMR})

as described by Pennycuick (2008). Here R is the respiration factor, \eta is the muscle conversion efficiency and \mathrm{BMR} the basal metabolic rate, see Bird.

Value

Chemical power of same type as inpute power.chem.

Author(s)

Marco Klein Heerenbrink

References

Pennycuick, C. J. (2008). Modelling the flying bird. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.

See Also

Bird, computeFlappingPower, mech2chem, chem2mech

Examples

## Define a bird:
myBird = Bird(
  massTotal = 0.215, #  (kg) total body mass
  wingSpan = 0.67, #  (m) maximum wing span
  wingArea = 0.0652, #  (m2) maximum wing area
  type = "passerine"
)

## for maximum continuous power
power.max <- computeAvailablePower(myBird)
print(power.max)
#   [1] 5.233528

## convert to chemical power
power.max.chem <- computeChemicalPower(power.max,myBird)
print(power.max.chem)
#   [1] 27.28913