Propulsive Performance of Tandem Flapping Wings for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (Auvs) and Surface Ships

Mannam, Naga Praveen Babu and Avula, Venkata Ramana (2021) Propulsive Performance of Tandem Flapping Wings for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (Auvs) and Surface Ships. In: 4th IEEE International Conference on Computing, Power and Communication Technologies, GUCON 2021, 24 September 2021 through 26 September 2021, Kuala Lumpur.

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Abstract

The application of tandem flapping foils propulsors to conventional aerial and underwater vehicles plays a most important role in the exploration of aerial and marine environments. The hydrodynamic study of fish schooling or birds flock when swimming/flying in fluid media and the application towards development of tandem flapping wing robots gaining more importance in the field of bioinspired vehicles. The advantages of tandem flapping wing configuration are improved thrust performance; maneuvering and less energy input as the downstream foils consumes less power compared to the single flapping foils. In thist study, the thrust of two flapping foils arranged in tandem mode subjected to pitching motion with different pitching amplitudes(AD), Strouhal numbers (StD), stream wise distance (S/c) and phase-lag (varphi) of foils are studied numerically using RANSE based CFD solver. This novel study mainly investigates the effects of Strouhal number and the dimensionless pitching amplitude on the thrust and efficiency of tandem foils. It is observed that the tandem foils generate higher efficiency at text{St}-{mathrm{D}}=0.2 and mathrm{A}-{mathrm{D}}= 0.7. At this condition, the effects of stream wise distance and phase-lag of tandem foils are also investigated. When varphi is constant and S/c changes from 0.109 to 1, the efficiency of the upstream foil decreases and the efficiency of downstream foil increases. When S/c is constant and varphi changes from 0° to 180°, upstream foil efficiency increases and downstream foil efficiency decreases with increase in phase-lag. When varphi is 90°, total efficiency of the two foils gets the maximum value. In general, when S/c is 1 and varphi is 90°, the tandem flapping foils get the maximum propulsive efficiency. For achieving this condition, pitching amplitude, frequency and increased phase lag between the two foils plays a significant role compared to the stream wise distance(S/c) between the tandem foils. © 2021 IEEE.

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