On the Mechanism of Large Amplitude Flapping of Inverted Foil in a Uniform Flow

TL;DR

This study investigates the complex large amplitude flapping of an inverted elastic foil in a uniform flow, examining vortex interactions through 3D simulations and an analytical model, revealing the effects of vortex suppression and flow regime on flapping behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel configuration with a splitter plate to study vortex interactions and develops an analytical model for flow-induced flapping dynamics.

Findings

Vortex suppression has little effect on transverse flapping amplitude.

Trailing edge vortex suppression reduces flapping frequency and energy.

Large amplitude flapping ceases at low Reynolds numbers without vortex shedding.

Abstract

An elastic foil interacting with a uniform flow with its trailing edge clamped, also known as the inverted foil, exhibits a wide range of complex self-induced flapping regimes such as large amplitude flapping (LAF), deformed and flipped flapping. Here, we perform three-dimensional numerical experiments to examine the role of vortex shedding and the vortex-vortex interaction on the LAF response at Reynolds number Re=30,000. Here we investigate the dynamics of the inverted foil for a novel configuration wherein we introduce a fixed splitter plate at the trailing edge to suppress the vortex shedding from trailing edge and inhibit the interaction between the counter-rotating vortices. We find that the inhibition of the interaction has an insignificant effect on the transverse flapping amplitudes, due to a relatively weaker coupling between the counter-rotating vortices emanating from the leading edge and trailing edge. However, the inhibition of the trailing edge vortex reduces the streamwise flapping amplitude, the flapping frequency and the net strain energy of foil. To further generalize our understanding of the LAF, we next perform low-Reynolds number (Re$\in[0.1,50]$) simulations for the identical foil properties to realize the impact of vortex shedding on the large amplitude flapping. Due to the absence of vortex shedding process in the low-$Re$ regime, the inverted foil no longer exhibits the periodic flapping. However, the flexible foil still loses its stability through divergence instability to undergo a large static deformation. Finally, we introduce an analogous analytical model for the LAF based on the dynamics of an elastically mounted flat plate undergoing flow-induced pitching oscillations in a uniform stream.