Haibin Xie, Han Zhou, Lincheng Shen, and Dong Yin
Undulating fins, bionic propulsor, dynamics modelling, mechanismdesign
The undulating fin propulsion is inspired by fish using Median and/or Paired Fin (MPF) mode. This mode provides advantages of the vector thrust production and small disturbance to the ambient flow field, and also it could be applied on underwater robots conveniently. Two bionic undulating fins are designed to imitate the structure and function of undulating fin of aquatic animals, which are fixed-waveform mode and independently-driven mode. The active deformation of bionic undulating fins is described by a kinematic model. Base on the kinematic model, a simplified computational model is derived theoretically to analyse the dynamics of the bionic propulsor. The dynamic model considers six components of forces and moments. The dynamics performance related to the geometric parameters, undulating parameters as well as the carrier velocity are further discussed through simulation. Furthermore, the above analytic method is verified through the thrust/moment and velocity test using the bionic propulsor.
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