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Scaling laws for the propulsive performance of a purely pitching foil in ground effect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2021

Amin Mivehchi*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA
Qiang Zhong
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22094, USA
Melike Kurt
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA
Daniel B. Quinn
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22094, USADepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA
Keith W. Moored
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: mivehchi@lehigh.edu

Abstract

Scaling laws for the thrust production and power consumption of a purely pitching hydrofoil in ground effect are presented. For the first time, ground-effect scaling laws based on physical insights capture the propulsive performance over a wide range of biologically relevant Strouhal numbers, dimensionless amplitudes and dimensionless ground distances. This is achieved by advancing previous scaling laws (Moored & Quinn (AIAA J., 2018, pp. 1–15)) with physics-driven modifications to the added mass and circulatory forces to account for ground distance variations. The key physics introduced are the increase in the added mass of a foil near the ground and the reduction in the influence of a wake-vortex system due to the influence of its image system. The scaling laws are found to be in good agreement with new inviscid simulations and viscous experiments, and can be used to accelerate the design of bio-inspired hydrofoils that oscillate near a ground plane or two out-of-phase foils in a side-by-side arrangement.

Information

Type
JFM Rapids
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Table 1.Numerical and experimental variables and parameters. The aspect ratio is where s is the span length of a hydrofoil, and the Reynolds number is $Re = Uc/\nu$ where $\nu$ is the kinematic viscosity. The first experiments were performed at the University of Virginia (UVA), while the second experiments were performed at Lehigh University (Lehigh U.).

Figure 1

Figure 1.Schematic of (a) the constrained pitching hydrofoil apparatus at Lehigh University (Kurt et al.2019), and (b) the constrained hydrofoil apparatus at the UVA.

Figure 2

Figure 2.Effects of the image vortex system. (a) The down-stroke negatively signed vortex slows down due to the influence of its image vortex ($l_u>l_d$). (b) The induced streamwise velocity of the shedding vortex, $u_{ind}$, and its image. The induced velocity, $\overrightarrow{V}_{ind}$, from the pair is smaller than a comparable isolated vortex.

Figure 3

Figure 3.Coefficient of thrust and power as a function of reduced frequency from the self-propelled simulations. The marker colours going from black to white indicate $D^{*}$ from far to close-ground cases, respectively, over the range of $0.3 \leq D^{*} \leq 2.0$. (a,c) Normalized based on dynamic pressure. (b,d) Normalized based on added mass forces.

Figure 4

Figure 4.Scaling of the (a) thrust and (b) power coefficients for all motion amplitudes and ground proximities considered in the numerical simulations.

Figure 5

Figure 5.Scaling of the time-averaged thrust and power for (a,b) UVA data set (EXP1) and (c,d) Lehigh University data set (EXP2) for all motion amplitudes and distances from the wall considered in experiments. The dashed lines present 20 % margins of error.

Figure 6

Figure 6.The influence of the proposed ground-effect terms on the scaling laws of a purely pitching foil using the numerical data. The dimensionless distance from the ground is mapped from white to black for the closest to the furthest proximity. Previous out-of-ground-effect scaling laws for the (a) thrust and (b) power coefficients (Moored & Quinn 2018). The addition of the ground-effect added mass correction only to the (c) thrust and (d) power coefficients. The addition of the ground-effect circulatory correction only to the (e) power coefficient. The bold terms on the figure labels are the terms examined in each case.