Athanasios Tsekouras Email & Phone Number

Athens, Gr

Athens, Attiki, Greece

This master thesis was a collaboration between the Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery (LFMT) and the Swedish start-up company DOLPROP SA. The company's vision is to develope the world’s most sustainable marine propulsion technology through biomimetic approaches.Thesis title: "Self-similarity and force scaling in cetacean swimming"Advisor: Nick Lagopoulos, PhDObjectives set:• 2D and 3D CFD analyses to evaluate the hydrodynamic performance (thrust, propulsive efficiency etc) of wings of the same motion but of different size.• Investigation of the Reynolds number and aspect ratio effect on the propulsive performance of oscilating wings with fish-like motion pattern.• Qualitative evaluation of the wake status and vortex structures, as well as understanding of the mechanism of vortex formation around the wing.• Comparison of the performance of biomimetic wings relative to rectangular ones.• Investigation of the existence of cavitation at high-Re numbers.• Implementation of two mesh strategies (overset and dynamic mesh) and two boundary layer modelling strategies (low and high Reynolds approach). The effectiveness of the four variants was examined based on their deviation from experimental/numerical literature data and on the basis of the required computational cost. The most appropriate variation was applied to the cases defined by the company.