Strongly coupled fluid–structure interaction analysis of aquatic flapping wings based on flexible multibody dynamics and the modified unsteady vortex lattice method

Because of their superior efficiency and low detectability compared to conventional submarine-shaped vehicles, bionic underwater vehicles such as Mantabot are playing increasingly important roles in ocean exploration. However, current research on manta-inspired robots is limited to structural design and pure hydrodynamics analysis of pectoral fin performance, with other aspects such as hydroelasticity and optimal design of flapping wings rarely addressed. This work presents a novel method for analyzing aquatic flapping wings by coupling flexible multibody dynamics with a modified unsteady vortex lattice method. The flexible multibody system is solved by using the absolute nodal coordinate formulation, and the conventional unsteady vortex lattice method is modified to accommodate dynamic stall. Compactly supported radial basis functions are used to transfer the hydroelastic forces and structural displacements across the interface meshes while satisfying global energy conservation, and a predictor–corrector method is used to stabilize the iteration procedure. Three different experiments are used to validate the flexible multibody dynamics solver, the modified unsteady vortex lattice solver, and the proposed fluid–structure interaction framework, respectively. Finally, the hydroelastic framework is demonstrated for a fin-like wing, and how flexibility and movement affect the flapping wing dynamics is examined. Numerical examples show that reducing the structural stiffness of the aquatic flapping wing within a certain range improves the propulsive efficiency but also reduces the thrust coefficient, and how the stiffness distribution affects the thrust and propulsive efficiency remains consistent over a range of the Strouhal number.