| The objective of this Project is the design of an undulating propeller that can be applied to the propulsion of marine vehicles and to the propelling of fluids. As a result of the study, it is proposed an innovative design of an undulating propulsion surface, formed by rigid solids (which has been protected by a patent ref.: P200803079), inspired by the way of fish swimming called anguiliform. For achieving such rippling motion it has been proposed an innovative design of operating mechanism based on eccentrics (also protected by patent ref.: P200500384) In order to experimentally test the performance of the proposed undulating propeller, a prototype has been built in the mechanical shop of the EUP including the abovementioned innovations. Furthermore, a data acquisition system was designed and bollard pull trials were developed in the test tank, purpose built in the EUP of the UDC It has also been developed a 2D simplified CFD model, using the commercial code Fluent, to predict the hydrodynamic behavior of the driving surface, which will allow the development and optimization of the same, significantly reducing economic investment and time needed for tests with prototypes. |
