Effect of section shape, aspect ratio and thickness on the propulsive property of three-dimensional oscillating wing – a numerical study

ABSTRACT

A three-dimensional numerical simulation is employed to investigate the effect of oscillating wing's section shape, aspect ratio and thickness on its propulsive property. The overlapping grid technique is employed to simulate the oscillating wing's motion at a moderate high Reynolds number of 1.0 × 104. The results show that the NACA0012 profile exhibits the best propulsive performance, compared with the other two section shape. As for the aspect ratio (AR), the mean value of the thrust force coefficient shows linear growth with the variation of AR and the optimal value of AR is suggested to be set as 3.0. Similar to the AR effect, there exists optimum value of thickness leading to the highest propulsive efficiency and the corresponding value is suggested to be set as 12% of the chord length. The vortex structures in the wake of the oscillating wing under different parameters are also presented and discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Oscillating wing
• propulsive property
• section shape
• aspect ratio
• thickness effect

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the constructive and useful suggestions from two anonymous reviewers, whose comments have led to a substantial improvement in our work. We would also like to thank the support from the Project of National Defense Science and Technology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Key Laboratory of Hydrodynamics Foundation [Grant Number 350124116].