Experimental Reseach On The Propulsion Performance Of Carangiform Robotic Fish

At present, fishes'swimming ability is still much better than the conventional propulsion mechanism, fishes'swimming mode research and robotic fish development are both research highlight from the beginning up to now. In this paper, we take Carangiform propulsion mode fish as research object, the paper divided into three parts: the kinematics model and system design of robofish, CFD simulation, and experimental tests. The main contents and contributions of the research are summarized as follows:1) Based on the bionic research on Carangiform propulsion mode during one-freedom steady swimming condition, we build a kinematic model of this mode, and a Carangiform robotic fish with 4 joints has been developed;2) A simplified model of robotic fish used in CFD simulation is set up, we implement the simulation analysis on the undulatory motion of robotic fish, and analyze the information of flow field around the fish body, as well as the forming & dissipation mechanism of reverse Karman vortex streets;3) According to the measuring methods, we design and develop an experimental measure system. By using this system, we measure the forward speed and propulsive force of robotic fish under one-freedom steady swimming. With the measure results, the influence of the robotic fish's kinematic parameters to its propulsive performance can be studied;4) With these measure results, we can calculate the propulsion efficiency of robotic fish. We can also find out the influence of the robotic fish's kinematic parameters to its propulsion efficiency.The research work and conclusion is not only significant to the following theoretical research, but also of potential application value for optimization design of new robotic fish.