Numerical Study of a Flapping Flat Plate for Thrust Generation

플랩핑 평판의 추력발생에 대한 수치적 연구

Insect and birds in nature flap their wings to generate fluid dynamic forces that are required for the locomotion. Most of the previous published papers discussed mainly on the effect of flapping parameters such as flapping frequency and amplitude on the thrust at a fixed Reynolds number. However, it is not much known on the values of the flapping parameters that the flapping wing requires to generate the thrust at the low Reynolds number flow. In this paper, the onset of the thrust generation is investigated using the lattice Boltzmann method. The wake patterns and velocity profiles behind a flat plate in heaving oscillation are investigated for the heaving amplitude of 0.5C. The time-averaged thrust coefficient value is investigated by changing the reduced frequency from 0.125 to 3.0 for three values of heaving amplitude (h/C=0.25, 0.325, 0.50). It is also found that the critical Strouhal number over which the flat plate starts to produce the thrust is around 0.1 and the thrust is an exponential function of the Strouhal number.