Influence of the wake model on the thrust of oscillating foil

Trust generation by flapping wing is a complex fluid phenomenon involving unsteady effects. The work discusses a Boundary Element Method (BEM) based computer model for the analysis of hydrodynamic forces on flapping foil. The specific focus is on the wake model and its effects on the generated thrust. An unsteady formulation of the Kutta condition, assuming finite pressure difference at the trailing edge of the moving foil, was implemented in the numerical procedure to account for the shedding of trailing-edge vortical structures. It is shown that the numerical results depend strongly on the choice of the wake model, especially at large oscillation frequencies. However, the model of the thrust-producing jet (due to the trailing-edge pressure differences) predicts accurately the thrust trend as a function of the oscillation frequency. In other words, the numerical results show the need of experimental data in order to choose the appropriate wake model. An experimental validation of the numerical method is proposed on the basis of recent experimental results that clearly show the time lag between the foil vertical acceleration and generated thrust as predicted by the model. This proves the point that the unsteady BEM approach to these problems is physically sound.