Determination of the prey impact region in a spider orb-web from in-plane vibration

•We study the inverse problem of locating a prey in a spider orb-web from measurements of the in-plane dynamic response of the web immediately after the impact.•A reconstruction algorithm for the impact region is proposed.•The results show that the information gathered by the spider positioned at the center of the web is sufficient for a precise localization of the prey.•The simulations show that the sensitivity of the reconstruction to errors on the data is significant only when the observation time is close to the theoretical minimum time.•When the observation time is the order of a few tens of milliseconds the information available to the spider from the in-plane response of the web is sufficient for a precise determination of the prey’s impact region. In this paper we study the inverse problem of locating a prey in a spider orb-web from measurements of the in-plane dynamic response of the web immediately after the impact. The orb-web, having axial symmetry and fixed boundary, is described by a continuous pre-stressed membrane undergoing infinitesimal deformation. The impact of the prey is modeled by an in-plane pressure field, whose two spatial components constitute the unknowns of the inverse problem. A reconstruction algorithm for the impact region is proposed, which is essentially based on the determination of certain generalized Fourier coefficients of the loading terms starting from discrete in-plane dynamical measurements that mimic what the spider performs in nature. The results show that the information gathered by the spider positioned at the center of the web is sufficient for a precise localization of the prey, for different prey and orb-web characteristics. The simulations also show that the sensitivity of the reconstruction to errors on the data is significant only when the observation time is close to the theoretical minimum time.