‘Available online at wwwisciencedirect.com sero Gornser- Journal of Bionic Engineering 3 (2006) 147-153 CFD Simulation of Fish-like Body Moving in Viscous Liquid D, Adkins, Y. Y. Yan School of the Built Environment, The University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NGT 2RD, UK Abstract ‘The study of fish-lke bodies moving in liquid is an interesting and challenging research subject in the fields of bio- Tocomotion and biomimeties. Typically the effect of tail oscillation on Muid flow around such a body is highly unsteady, gen- erating vortices and requiring detailed analysis of id-structure interactions, An understanding ofthe complexities of such flows is of interest not only to biologists but also to engineers interested in developing vehicles capable of emulating the high per- formance of fish propulsion and manoeuvring. In the present study, a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation of a three-dimensional biomimetic fish-like body has been developed to investigate the fluid flows around this body when moving in viscous liquid, A parametric analysis ofthe variables that affect the flow surrounding the body is presented, long with flow visualisations, in an attempt to quantify and qualify the effect that these variables have on the performance of the body. The analysis provided by the unsteady transient simulation ofa fish-like body has allowed the flow surrounding a fish-ike body undergoing periodic oscillations to be studied. The simulation produces a motion ofthe tal in the (x,y) plane, with the til os- cillating asa rigid body in the form ofa sinusoidal wave. Keywords: CFD, biomimetics, fish-ike body Corsi © 2006, in Universi Pblshed by Science Press nd Evie Limited. ll sghis reserved. 1 Introduction Engineers are continuously on the quest to find faster, more efficient means of transportation especially in the area of underwater vehicles". This has led a number of researchers to turn their attention to the power and manoeuvring of swimming fish “Aquatic animals {have for many years, been] considered superior in ca- pability when they are compared to technologies pro- duced from nautical engineering” The locomotion of modern fish is a result of many millions of years of evolutionary optimisation; it can therefore be instructive in the exploration of unsteady flow control. The swimming method of propulsion util- ised by fish is completely different from the propulsion methods employed in human engineered vehicles and swimming has been shown by prior analysis to achieve high propulsive efficiency through a rhythmic unsteady Corresponding author: Y.¥. Yan 1: yuying yan @nottingham.ac.uk motion of the body and fins'"', Improved performance. through unsteady flow control is gained by the formation of large-scale vortices through body motion, the sensing. and manipulation of these vortices as they move down the body, and the eventual repositioning of the vortices through tail motion. The timing of formation, shedding, and position of the vortic are crucial to an effective manoeuvre. ‘The implementation of computational fluid dy- namics (CFD) to new areas such as biology and sports science has already produced a number of significant improvements in equipment design and technique pre- scription in areas such as sailing performance, Olympic ski jumping and Formula 1 racing. CFD analysis has been applied to swimming for understanding of the ac- tive drag and propulsion (net thrust) generated in un- derwater dolphin kicking, with the goal of prescribing an optimal kick profile in swim starts and tums!*. CFD was also famously applied to the research and development of Speedo’s new Fastskin FSII swimsuit,148 Journal of Bionic Engineering (2006) Vol3 No.3 Most aquatic vertebrates achieve undulatory pro- pulsion by sending alternating waves down the body ‘towards the tip ofthe tail. These waves cause the body to oscillate sinusiodally and create a jet in the wake and hence a forward force, namely thrust. Undulatory swimming is a highly effective means of continuous locomotion by aquatic vertebrates. The analysis by Liu et al. ®*) has been developed for modelling undulatory swimming in aquatic vertebrates. Furthermore this propulsive technique, utilised by ‘most fish, can be divided into two modes, as shown in Fig. 1, the anguilliform and the carangiform'”!. When using the anguilliform mode, as shown in Fig. 1a, un- dulation takes place along the whole body and the pro- pulsive wave travels from the head to the tail. Con- versely, in the case of the carangiform mode as shown in Fig. 1b, the undulation only takes place in the posterior half of the fish. This second mode of swimming is also termed “lunate-tail_ swimming propulsion”. The ca- rangiform mode seems to have been adopted by some of the fastest swimming fish. PN —— (3) The angiform motion of an cel Fig, 1 Modes of swimming of fishes. (©) The carangiform mation of tuna ‘The bases of improved performance through un- steady flow control are the formation of large-scale vor- tices through body motion, the sensing and manipulation of these vortices and the eventual repositioning of the vortices through tail motion. In the present study, a CFD simulation of a biomimetic fish-like body in viscous fluid is performed using commercial CFD software package FLUENT 6.2. 2 Mathematical and numerical models 241 Turbulent model and boundary conditions This article is aimed to resolve viscous flow around moving fish-like body. Unsteady solutions 10 the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are the key for understanding such highly unsteady fluid phe- nomena. A computational system based on a method of, three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations solver is developed and can be directly applied to realistic bio- logical problems. For the three dimensional problem of a fish-like body moving in viscous fluid, the turbulent flow can be characterised by fluctuating velocity fields. ‘These fluctuations mix transported quantities and cause the transported quantities to fluctuate as well. Since these fluctuations can be of small scale and high fre- quency, they are too computationally expensive to simulate directly in practical engineering calculations. Instead, the solution variables in the instantaneous (ex- act) Navier-Stokes (NS) equations can be decomposed into the mean and fluctuating components by the Rey- nolds-averaged approach, resulting in a modified set of equations that are computationally less expensive to solve, Based on the CFD code description", the Rey- nolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations can be written in Cartesian tensor form as: Q) where x; 1) and x; represent Cartesian coordinates and t is time, respectively. RANS equations have the same general form as the instantaneous NS equations, with the velocities u;, uj and 1, density p, viscosity 4, and other solution variables now representing ensemile-averaged (or time-averaged) values. Additional terms now appear that represent the effects of turbulence. These Reynolds stresses, ~pifi) , must be modelled in order to close Eq. (2). A common method is to employ the Boussinesq hypothesis to relate the Reynolds stresses to the mean velocity gradients: where k is the turbulence kinetic energy and jy theturbulent viscosity The turbulent flow induced by the tail oscillation is, characterised by fluctuating velocity fields. These fluc- tuations mix transported quantities such as momentum, energy and species concentration the transported quan- tities also fluctuate. These fluctuations are often small in scale and of high frequency and thus computationally expensive to calculate at every instant in time. Therefore the instantaneous governing equations can be time av- eraged to reduce the computational time and complexity which is done in the form of turbulence models. ‘The k-e turbulence model is implemented in the simulation, which is often described to be the “work- horse” of practical engineering flow calculations. The Boussinesq hypothesis is used in the ke models. The advantage of this approach is the relatively low computa- tional cost associated with the computation of ja. Al- though no turbulence mode! is perfect, the k-e turbulence model is robust, economic and reasonably accurate ‘enough for a wide range of turbulent flows. Hence, for the initial simulations the standard A-e turbulence model, with the default standard settings was found to be suffi- ciently accurate. The k-e turbulence model is a semi-empirical model based on the transport equations for the turbulent kinetic energy (k) and its dissipation rate (e). ‘The model relies on the Boussinesq approach to turbulent flow. This method relates the Reynolds stresses as given in Eq. (3). The advantage of this method is the relatively low computational cost associated with the computation of turbulent viscosity 4», which is computed as a function of k and e. The disadvantage is that it assumes that, is an isotropic scalar quantity, which is not strictly true. , Ha lg ale 6 “ ® =G, -C, em (5) CPE In these equations, C;_ and Cz, are constants. 04 and o are the turbulent Prandtl numbers for & and , respec- tively. Ge represents the generation of turbulence kinetic energy due to the mean velocity gradients and can be D. Adkins, Y-Y. Yan: CFD Simulation of Fishslike Body Moving in Viscous Liquid calculated by G, =— puja, = 6) PHS © ‘The turbulent viscosity, 4, can be computed by com- bining & and e as: K = PC, 0 where CG, is a constant. Default values for the model constants, Cie Can Cy» oe and a, are used for the caleu- lation as Ci=1.44, Co=1.92, C,=0.09, 0421.0, 0,-1.3. ‘The FLUENT 6.2 solver was used to solve the above transport equations. As the equations are non-linear, several iterations of the solution loop were performed before convergence was obtained. The gov- cerning equations were linearised in an implicit form with respect to the dependent variables of interest. Using an implicit method means that for a given variable, the ‘unknown value in each cell is computed using a relation that includes both existing and unknown values from neighbouring cells. In the segregated solution method each discrete governing equation was linearised implic- itly with respect to that equation’s dependent variable. This resulted in a system of linear equations with one equation in each cell domain. A point implicit (Gauss-Seidel) linear equation solver is used in con- {junction with an algebraic multi-grid (AMG) method by the CFD software package to solve the resultant scalar system of equations for the dependent variable in each cell. The first-order implicit unsteady formulation option is used in the simulation because the first-order implicit time advancement is sufficient for most problems, and ‘more importantly dynamic mesh simulations currently only work with first-order time advancement. In the simulations the boundary conditions con- sisted of a free stream inflow velocity at the inlet of 0.7, ms" a pressure outlet with backflow direction normal to boundary, and a no-slip wall condition atthe fish-like body surface. 2.2 Mesh structure and moving mesh Mesh construction is important as both the accu- racy of solution and the subsequent calculation time are dependent on the fineness of the grid. In the present simulation an unstructured tetrahedral grid, as shown in