Modeling and Hydrodynamic Characteristics of Bionic Undulate Fin Propeller Driven by Hydraulic

Abstract

The bionic undulating propeller driven by hydraulic system has different structure, kinematic and dynamic characteristics than that of the common bionic undulating propellers driven by other sources. This paper highlights firstly the structure and driving mechanism of bionic undulating propeller with a hydraulic system, and then setup its kinematic model, based on ruled-surface equation. Changing rules of dynamic mesh for bionic fin is designed based on kinetic model. Later on, the changing courses of hydrodynamic force caused by the bionic undulating fin are calculated and studied with the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) method, as well as the changing characteristics of the fluid pressure field. The analysis showed that while driven by hydraulic system, the bionic propeller could produce full-baseline undulating motion, and has flexible start-up process, as well as doubled-frequency character. The bionic undulating fin driven by hydraulic system puts up flexible characters on both kinematic and dynamics. Key Words: Hydraulic Driven; Undulating Fin; Bionic Propeller; Dynamic Mesh; Hydrodynamics