Abstract
Experimental investigations on biomimetic mechanical fins have been carried out by researchers to study and mimic the behaviour of fish. Flexible fins are proven to be better than rigid fins in terms of thrust force generation and efficiency when the degree of flexibility is chosen appropriately. It is observed that fishes can modulate their fin stiffness by muscle coactivation. Also, fins of different variety of fishes are developed with different stiffnesses through natural evolution to cope up with different living conditions. Inspired by the natural design of fish fins with varying flexural stiffness along the chord, in this work, a search-based numerical optimization study is conducted to investigate on the optimal flexural stiffness distribution yielding maximum thrust force. For this, a dynamic model of a flexible fin is developed through multi-body dynamics approach by considering the flexible fin as multiple rigid segments connected with torsion springs. Blade element method is utilized to compute the hydrodynamic forces acting on the fin segments. Based on the design optimizations several flat plate fins of trapezoidal geometry are developed with varied distribution of stiffness. Experiments are conducted with the fabricated fins to validate the optimization results for maximized propulsion performance.
Published Version
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