Both body undulation and caudal fin flapping play essential locomotive roles while a fish is swimming, but how these two affect the swimming performance and hydrodynamics of fish individually is yet to be known. We implemented a biomimetic robotic fish that travel along a servo towing system, which can be regarded as “treadmill” of the model. Hydrodynamics was studied as a function of the principal kinetic parameters of the undulatory body and caudal fin of the model in a self-propelled condition, under which the time-averaged measured axial net force becomes zero. Thrust efficiency was estimated from two-dimensional digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) measurements in the horizontal and mid-caudal fin plane. The Single-Row Reverse Karman wake (2S) is commonly observed in many previous studies of live fish swimming. However, we show that a Double-Row Two-Paired vortices (2P) wake was generated by the robotic model for most kinetic parameter combinations. Interestingly, the 2S wake emerged within the ...
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