Numerical investigation on the propulsive capability of oscillating fish swimming
| Componente | Categoria |
|---|---|
| Giorgio Graziani | Aggiungi Tutor di riferimento (Professore o Ricercatore afferente allo stesso Dipartimento del Proponente) |
| Luca Padovani | Dottorando/Assegnista/Specializzando componente il gruppo di ricerca |
Several fish species like tunafish propel by oscillating the tail as a flapping foil, while the remaining part of the body essentially contributes to the overall drag. Since in this case thrust and drag are in a way separable, being given by different parts of the fish's body, most of the attention was focused in the past on the study of a flapping foil under a prescribed stream and on its propulsive efficiency.
On the other hand for undulatory fish, whose drag and thrust are severely entangled and hardly separable, the self-propelled locomotion approach has been largely recognized as the main path to be followed to obtain meaningful results, hence the propulsive efficiency loses its meaning and has to be replaced by the cost of transport as a measure of the swimming performance.
By using a simple inviscid numerical method, properly assessed by a viscous solver, the intention is to study the self-propelled swimming mode and the performance for cruising motions of an oscillatory two-dimensional swimming fish, with the aim to highlight the differences with the prescribed stream approach in determining the optimal swimming conditions.