A Computational Fluid Dynamics Investigation of a Flapping Hydrofoil as a Thruster

The paper features a computational fluid dynamics study of a flapping NACA0015 hydrofoil moving with a combination of sinusoidal heaving and pitching. Several kinematic configurations are explored, varying sequentially pitch and heave amplitude, Strouhal number and phase angle, in an attempt to determine the influence of each parameter on the propulsive performance. To optimize efficiency the angle of attack should assume the highest value that also avoids the arise of the leading edge vortex generated in the dynamic stall state. At low Strouhal number optimum is reached at high heave amplitudes, which correspond to the configurations minimizing the hysteresis in the (C-y,C-x) plane. The same outcome in terms of hysteresis minimization has been verified to occur when optimal phase shift was considered. Differently, when the Strouhal number and the angle of attack become higher, to exploit efficiently the lift increment owed to dynamic stall it emerged the necessity of adopting low heave amplitude to improve separation resistance, avoiding the occurrence of deep stall.