Search for: All records

Abstract This paper presents a numerical investigation into the aerodynamic characteristics and fluid dynamics of a flying snake-like model employing vertical bending locomotion during aerial undulation in steady gliding. In addition to its typical horizontal undulation, the modeled kinematics incorporates vertical undulations and dorsal-to-ventral bending movements while in motion. Using a computational approach with an incompressible flow solver based on the immersed-boundary method, this study employs topological local mesh refinement mesh blocks to ensure the high resolution of the grid around the moving body. Initially, we applied a vertical wave undulation to a snake model undulating horizontally, investigating the effects of vertical wave amplitudes ( ${\psi }_m$). The vortex dynamics analysis unveiled alterations in leading-edge vortices formation within the midplane due to changes in the effective angle of attack resulting from vertical bending, directly influencing lift generation. Our findings highlighted peak lift production at ${\psi }_m={2.5}^{\circ }$and the highest lift-to-drag ratio (L/D) at ${\psi }_m=5^{\circ }$, with aerodynamic performance declining beyond this threshold. Subsequently, we studied the effects of the dorsal–ventral bending amplitude ( ${\psi }_{\text{DV}}$), showing that the tail-up/down body posture can result in different fore-aft body interactions. Compared to the baseline configuration, the lift generation is observed to increase by 17.3% at ${\psi }_{\text{DV}}$= 5°, while a preferable L/D is found at ${\psi }_{\text{DV}}$= −5°. This study explains the flow dynamics associated with vertical bending and uncovers fundamental mechanisms governing body–body interaction, contributing to the enhancement of lift production and efficiency of aerial undulation in snake-inspired gliding. 

Flying insects exhibit remarkable capabilities in coordinating their olfactory sensory system and flapping wings during odour plume-tracking flights. While observations have indicated that their flapping wing motion can ‘sniff’ up the incoming plumes for better odour sampling range, how flapping motion impacts the odour concentration field around the antennae is unknown. Here, we reconstruct the body and wing kinematics of a forwards-flying butterfly based on high-speed images. Using an in-house computational fluid dynamics solver, we simulate the unsteady flow field and odourant transport process by solving the Navier–Stokes and odourant advection-diffusion equations. Our results show that, during flapping flight, the interaction between wing leading-edge vortices and antenna vortices strengthens the circulation of antenna vortices by over two-fold compared with cases without flapping motion, leading to a significant increase in odour intensity fluctuation along the antennae. Specifically, the interaction between the wings and antennae amplifies odour intensity fluctuations on the antennae by up to 8.4 fold. This enhancement is critical in preventing odour fatigue during odour-tracking flights. Further analysis reveals that this interaction is influenced by the inter-antennal angle. Adjusting this angle allows insects to balance between resistance to odour fatigue and the breadth of odour sampling. Narrower inter-antennal angles enhance fatigue resistance, while wider angles extend the sampling range but reduce resistance. Additionally, our findings suggest that while the flexibility of the wings and the thorax's pitching motion in butterflies do influence odour fluctuation, their impact is relatively secondary to that of the wing–antenna interaction. 

Manta rays use wing-like pectoral fins for intriguing oscillatory swimming. It provides rich inspiration for designing potentially fast, efficient, and maneuverable soft swimming robots, which, however, have yet to be realized. It remains a grand challenge to combine fast speed, high efficiency, and high maneuverability in a single soft swimmer while using simple actuation and control. Here, we report leveraging spontaneous snapping stroke in the monostable flapping wing of a manta-like soft swimmer to address the challenge. The monostable wing is pneumatically actuated to instantaneously snap through to stroke down, and upon deflation, it will spontaneously stroke up by snapping back to its initial state, driven by elastic restoring force, without consuming additional energy. This largely simplifies designs, actuation, and control for achieving a record-high speed of 6.8 body length per second, high energy efficiency, and high maneuverability and collision resilience in navigating through underwater unstructured environments with obstacles by simply tuning single-input actuation frequencies. 

Abstract This study investigates the interaction of a two-manta-ray school using computational fluid dynamics simulations. The baseline case consists of two in-phase undulating three-dimensional manta models arranged in a stacked configuration. Various vertical stacked and streamwise staggered configurations are studied by altering the locations of the top manta in the upstream and downstream directions. Additionally, phase differences between the two mantas are considered. Simulations are conducted using an in-house developed incompressible flow solver with an immersed boundary method. The results reveal that the follower will significantly benefit from the upstroke vortices (UVs) and downstroke vortices depending on its streamwise separation. We find that placing the top manta 0.5 body length (BL) downstream of the bottom manta optimizes its utilization of UVs from the bottom manta, facilitating the formation of leading-edge vortices (LEVs) on the top manta’s pectoral fins during the downstroke. This LEV strengthening mechanism, in turn, generates a forward suction force on the follower that results in a 72% higher cycle-averaged thrust than a solitary swimmer. This benefit harvested from UVs can be further improved by adjusting the phase of the top follower. By applying a phase difference of $\pi /3$to the top manta, the follower not only benefits from the UVs of the bottom manta but also leverages the auxiliary vortices during the upstroke, leading to stronger tip vortices and a more pronounced forward suction force. The newfound interaction observed in schooling studies offers significant insights that can aid in the development of robot formations inspired by manta rays. 

Abstract Metachronous rowing is a swimming mechanism widely adopted by small marine invertebrate like comb jellies, in which rows of appendages perform propulsive strokes sequentially in a coordinated manner with a fixed phase difference. To simulate metachronous rowing at intermediate Reynolds number, in this paper, a row of flexible cilia models was placed inside the flow field, with their roots stroke at a sinusoidal function of time and a fixed phase difference. A fully coupled two-way numerical solver was developed, which solves the Navier-Stokes equations for the fluid field coupled with the differential equation for the flexible cilia model. This numerical solver is applied to investigate how the row of cilia models are deformed by the hydrodynamic forces (pressure and shear) and momentum and thus impact hydrodynamic performance. Results show that the passive deformation of cilia potentially improve the hydrodynamic performance compared to the rigid cilia. With the metachronous rowing mechanism, the cilia generate the thrust to move forward. The approach used in this study presents a general way to explore the fluid dynamics of complex fluid-structure interaction problems. 

In this study, we numerically investigate the effects of the tail-beat phase differences between the trailing fish and its neighboring fish on the hydrodynamic performance and wake dynamics in a two-dimensional high-density school. Foils undulating with a wavy-like motion are employed to mimic swimming fish. The phase difference varies from 0° to 360°. A sharp-interface immersed boundary method is used to simulate flows over the fish-like bodies and provide quantitative analysis of the hydrodynamic performance and wakes of the school. It is found that the highest net thrust and swimming efficiency can be reached at the same time in the fish school with a phase difference of 180°. In particular, when the phase difference is 90°, the trailing fish achieves the highest efficiency, 58% enhancement compared with a single fish, while it has the highest thrust production, increased by 108% over a single fish, at a phase difference of 0°. The performance and flow visualization results suggest that the phase of the trailing fish in the dense school can be controlled to improve thrust and propulsive efficiency, and these improvements occur through the hydrodynamic interactions with the vortices shed by the neighboring fish and the channel formed by the side fish. In addition, the investigation of the phase difference effects on the wake dynamics of schools performed in this work represents the first study in which the wake patterns for systems consisting of multiple undulating bodies are categorized. In particular, a reversed Bénard–von Kármán vortex wake is generated by the trailing fish in the school with a phase difference of 90°, while a Bénard–von Kármán vortex wake is produced when the phase difference is 0°. Results have revealed that the wake patterns are critical to predicting the hydrodynamic performance of a fish school and are highly dependent on the phase difference. 

This paper numerically studies the flow dynamics of aerial undulation of a snake-like model, which is adapted from the kinematics of the flying snake (Chrysopelea) undergoing a gliding process. The model applies aerial undulation periodically in a horizontal plane where a range of angle of attack (AOA) is assigned to model the real gliding motion. The flow is simulated using an immersed-boundary-method-based incompressible flow solver. Local mesh refinement mesh blocks are implemented to ensure the grid resolutions around the moving body. Results show that the undulating body produces the maximum lift at 45° of AOA. Vortex dynamics analysis has revealed a series of vortex structures including leading-edge vortices (LEV), trailing-edge vortices, and tip vortices around the body. Changes in other key parameters including the undulation frequency and Reynolds number are also found to affect the aerodynamics of the studied snake-like model, where increasing of undulation frequency enhances vortex steadiness and increasing of Reynolds number enhances lift production due to the strengthened LEVs. This study represents the first study of both the aerodynamics of the whole body of the snake as well as its undulatory motion, providing a new basis for investigating the mechanics of elongated flexible flyers. 

Numerical studies are presented on the propulsive performance and vortex dynamics of multiple hydrofoils pitching in an in-line configuration. The study is motivated by the quest to understand the hydrodynamics of multiple fin–fin interactions in fish swimming. Using the flow conditions (Strouhal and Reynolds numbers) obtained from a solitary pitching foil of zero net thrust, the effect of phase differences between neighboring foils on the hydrodynamic performance is examined both in position-fixed two- and three-foil systems at Reynolds number Re = 500. It is found that the threefoil system achieves a thrust enhancement up to 118% and an efficiency enhancement up to 115% compared to the two-foil system. Correspondingly, the leading-edge vortex (LEV) and the trailing-edge vortex (TEV) of the hindmost foil combine to form a ‘2P’ wake structure behind the three-foil system with the optimal phase differences instead of a ‘2S’ wake, a coherent wake pattern observed behind the optimal two-foil system. The finding suggests that a position-fixed three-foil system can generate a ‘2P’ wake to achieve the maximum thrust production and propulsive efficiency simultaneously by deliberately choosing the undulatory phase for each foil. When increasing Reynolds number to 1000, though the maximum thrust and propulsive efficiency are not achieved simultaneously, the most efficient case still produces more thrust than most of the other cases. Besides, the study on the effects of three-dimensionality shows that when the foils have a larger aspect ratio, the three-foil system has a better hydrodynamic performance, and it follows a similar trend as the two-dimensional (2D) foil system. This work aids in the future design of high-performance underwater vehicles with multiple controlled propulsion elements. 

Numerical simulations are employed to study hydrodynamic interactions between two-dimensional fish-like bodies under a traveling wavy lateral motion in high-density diamond-shaped fish schools. This study focuses on two different streamwise spacings, a dense school with 0.4 body length (BL) spacing and a sparse school with 2.0 BL spacing, respectively. An immersed-boundary-method-based incompressible Navier–Strokes flow solver is then employed to quantitatively simulate the resulting flow patterns and associated propulsive performance of the schools. The results suggest that a fish in the dense school achieves higher thrust production and higher propulsive efficiency than that in the sparse school due to a strong wall effect from neighboring fishes. In addition, results from changing the lateral spacing in the dense school have shown that the wall effect is enhanced as the lateral spacing decreases. Flow analyses have shown that the wake pattern of the fish swimming diagonally behind the leading fish in a dense diamond-shaped school transfers from 2S to 2P when the lateral spacing is smaller than 0.6 BL. As a result, an angled jet is produced behind the school and brings more momentum downstream. At the same time, the appearance of the trailing fish results in a stronger pressure region behind the leading fish and leads to a higher hydrodynamic performance of the leading fish in the dense school. The insights revealed from this study will contribute to understanding physical mechanisms in fish schools and providing a new swimming strategy for bio-inspired underwater swarm robots. 

Numerical simulations are employed to study hydrodynamic interactions between two-dimensional fish-like bodies under a traveling wavy lateral motion in high-density diamond-shaped fish schools. This study focuses on two different streamwise spacings, a dense school with 0.4 body length (BL) spacing and a sparse school with 2.0 BL spacing, respectively. An immersed-boundary-method-based incompressible Navier–Strokes flow solver is then employed to quantitatively simulate the resulting flow patterns and associated propulsive performance of the schools. The results suggest that a fish in the dense school achieves higher thrust production and higher propulsive efficiency than that in the sparse school due to a strong wall effect from neighboring fishes. In addition, results from changing the lateral spacing in the dense school have shown that the wall effect is enhanced as the lateral spacing decreases. Flow analyses have shown that the wake pattern of the fish swimming diagonally behind the leading fish in a dense diamond-shaped school transfers from 2S to 2P when the lateral spacing is smaller than 0.6 BL. As a result, an angled jet is produced behind the school and brings more momentum downstream. At the same time, the appearance of the trailing fish results in a stronger pressure region behind the leading fish and leads to a higher hydrodynamic performance of the leading fish in the dense school. The insights revealed from this study will contribute to understanding physical mechanisms in fish schools and providing a new swimming strategy for bio-inspired underwater swarm robots.