Computational fluid dynamics analysis and design of an ostraciiform swimming robot

The following paper presents the integration between the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of an oscillating foil and the design and fabrication of an ostraciiform swimming robot, a bio-inspired vehicle that consists of a rigid hull and an oscillating fin hinged to fore body through a revolute joint. Compared to other robotic fish, the aforementioned architecture has a lower propulsive efficiency but is capable of withstanding greater pressures with respect to other soft and piecewise-flexible propulsion systems. To generate the fin alternating motion a transmission mechanism based on a barrel cam was designed to replace the direct drive widely adopted in other biomimetic vehicles. In order to size the robot thruster and actuator, the forces acting on the oscillating fin were computed in Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations implemented in a Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) solver. The numerical predictions were compared to analytic solutions provided in literature and the resulting model was then adopted to design an ostraciiform swimming robot and its navigation, guidance and control system. This vehicle will serve, in future work, as a test bench to validate the author's conclusions.