Hydrodynamic performance of submerged hydrofoils subject to heave and pitch motions
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Flow passing a foil object will produce lift and drag forces, as well as vortex street BvK. With right parameters, a periodic motion of an object in fluids will generate thrust rather than drag. To reduce the study’s complexity, only kinematics parameters were modified and not the geometric ones. The hydrofoil interactions with waves have been investigated using an inhouse CFD code. First, the lift and drag coefficients were validated against the literature. Thereafter, different oscillation parameters, according to the sea state, were studied to optimize the performance of the thrust. From these results it appeared that it is possible to generate thrust at sea state. The numerical model successfully represented the flapping foil interactions with water, the BvK reversed vortices and the leasing-edges vortices. It also allowed observing the global trend of the impact of the flapping motion on thrust generation. Video recording