Numerical study of a pitching and heaving hydrofoil

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the hydrodynamics and fluid structure interactions in pitching and heaving hydrofoils. It also describes the study of a computational fluid dynamics of the swimming efficiency of a two dimensional flapping hydrofoil. The model accounts for viscous effects that are particularly important for flow separation. The model uses an arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) method to track the moving boundaries of oscillatory and flapping bodies and is limited to a Reynolds number of 1100. The chapter also presents a parametric analysis of the variables that affect the motion of the hydrofoil as it moves through the flow along with flow visualizations to quantify and qualify the effect that these variables have on the performance of the hydrofoil.