Swimming performance of a biomimetic compliant fish-like robot

Digital particle image velocimetry and fluorescent dye visualization are used to characterize the performance of fish-like swimming robots. During nominal swimming, these robots produce a ‘V’-shaped double wake, with two reverse-Kármán streets in the far wake. The Reynolds number based on swimming s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Experiments in fluids 2009-12, Vol.47 (6), p.927-939
Main Authors: Epps, Brenden P., Valdivia y Alvarado, Pablo, Youcef-Toumi, Kamal, Techet, Alexandra H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Computational fluid dynamics
Computer science
control theory
systems
Control theory. Systems
Digital particle image velocimetry
Engineering
Engineering Fluid Dynamics
Engineering Thermodynamics
Exact sciences and technology
Flapping
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
Fluid- and Aerodynamics
Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications)
Heat and Mass Transfer
Instrumentation for fluid dynamics
Physics
Research Article
Robotics
Robots
Swimming
Vortices
Wakes
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Summary:Digital particle image velocimetry and fluorescent dye visualization are used to characterize the performance of fish-like swimming robots. During nominal swimming, these robots produce a ‘V’-shaped double wake, with two reverse-Kármán streets in the far wake. The Reynolds number based on swimming speed and body length is approximately 7500, and the Strouhal number based on flapping frequency, flapping amplitude, and swimming speed is 0.86. It is found that swimming speed scales with the strength and geometry of a composite wake , which is constructed by freezing each vortex at the location of its centroid at the time of shedding. Specifically, we find that swimming speed scales linearly with vortex circulation. Also, swimming speed scales linearly with flapping frequency and the width of the composite wake. The thrust produced by the swimming robot is estimated using a simple vortex dynamics model, and we find satisfactory agreement between this estimate and measurements made during static load tests.
ISSN:0723-4864
1432-1114
DOI:10.1007/s00348-009-0684-8