Experiments with Flapping Hydrofoils to Produce Large, Transient Forces

For my Masters' thesis, I investigated how flapping hydrofoil propulsors could be used to help underwater vehicles control their position and/or orientation in unsteady ocean environments.

Using the MIT Testing Tank (setup described below), I experimentally measured the forces produced by different combinations of swift, one-time linear and rotational motions of a hydrofoil (example trajectory below). I also used dye visualization to show the wake structures and vortices produced by these motions and to elucidate the interactions between the wing and its own wake (example experiment below).

The full thesis can be found here.

This work has been presented at American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics Conference in 2018, and was part of the 2019 conference. See CV for more details.