Numerical and experimental studies on the propulsion performance of a Wave Glide propulsor

This paper introduces a newly developed Unmanned Wave Glide Vehicle (UWGV), which is driven only by extracting energy from gravity waves, and presents a comprehensive study on the propulsion performance of the UWGV’s propulsor―Wave Glide Propulsor (WGP) in a regular wave. By simplifying the WGP as six 2D tandem asynchronous flapping foils (TAFFs), a CFD method based on Navier–Stokes equations was first used to analyze the hydrodynamic performance of TAFFs with different parameters of non-dimensional wave length m and non-dimensional wave height n. Then, a series of hydrodynamic experiments were performed. The computational results agree well with the experimental results when n≤0.07 and both of them show the thrust force and input power of the WGP are larger at smaller m or larger n. By analyzing the flow field of TAFFs, we can see that a larger m is beneficial to the forming, merging and shredding of the TAFFs’ vortices; as TAFFs are arranged in tandem and have the same motions, the leading edge vortex and wake vortex of the TAFFs are meaningful for improving the thrust force of their adjacent ones.