Abstract
The high propulsive effi ciency, the fast manoeuvrability and the low noise production of the propulsion of marine animals inspired the development of a new ship propeller. This text describes the design of a fl apping foil ship propeller and the experiments performed on it. The fl apping foil propeller mimics the tail fi n of fi sh that swim at high speed, like tunas or sharks, in at least two ways: the hydrodynamics and the resonant driving mechanism. The motion of the foil is a combination of a heaving and a pitching oscillation, with a phase difference. The wake behind the tail of a fi sh has a special structure called the reversed von Karman street. If the motion parameters are well chosen, the wake behind the fl apping foil has a similar structure, resulting in positive thrust force and high propulsive effi ciency. The driving mechanism uses fl exibility to exclude the need for one of the two actuators. The infl uence of the free surface and the oscillation frequency on the performance is investigated.
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