Computational and experimental study on dynamic behavior of underwater robots propelled by bionic undulating fins

Bionic undulating fins, inspired by undulations of the median and/or paired fin (MPF) fish, have a bright prospective for underwater missions with higher maneuverability, lower noisy, and higher efficiency. In the present study, a coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was proposed and implemented to facilitate numerical simulations on hydrodynamic effects of the bionic undulating robots. Hydrodynamic behaviors of underwater robots propelled by two bionic undulating fins were computationally and experimentally studied within the three typical desired movement patterns, i.e., marching, yawing and yawing-while-marching. Moreover, several specific phenomena in the bionic undulation mode were unveiled and discussed by comparison between the CFD and experimental results under the same kinematics parameter sets. The contributed work on the dynamic behavior of the undulating robots is of importance for study on the propulsion mechanism and control algorithms.