{
  "id": "2211.13369",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2022-11-24T01:27:02.000Z",
  "updated": "2022-11-24T01:27:02.000Z",
  "title": "Propulsive performance of oscillating plates with time-periodic flexibility",
  "authors": [
    "David Yudin",
    "Daniel Floryan",
    "Tyler Van Buren"
  ],
  "comment": "31 pages, 12 figures",
  "categories": [
    "physics.flu-dyn"
  ],
  "abstract": "We use small-amplitude inviscid theory to study the swimming performance of a flexible flapping plate with time-varying flexibility. The stiffness of the plate oscillates at twice the frequency of the kinematics in order to maintain a symmetric motion. Plates with constant and time-periodic stiffness are compared over a range of mean plate stiffness, oscillating stiffness amplitude, and oscillating stiffness phase for isolated heaving, isolated pitching, and combined leading edge kinematics. We find that there is a profound impact of oscillating stiffness on the thrust, with a lesser impact on propulsive efficiency. Thrust improvements of up to 35% relative to a constant-stiffness plate are observed. For large enough frequencies and amplitudes of the stiffness oscillation, instabilities emerge. The unstable regions may confer enhanced propulsive performance; this hypothesis must be verified via experiments or nonlinear simulations.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2022-11-24T01:27:02.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "propulsive performance",
      "time-periodic flexibility",
      "oscillating plates",
      "mean plate stiffness",
      "small-amplitude inviscid theory"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 31,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}