Summer 2018, I have a great opportunity to work at UVA Flow Simulation Research Group at the University of Virginia. Over the summer, I mainly utilized computational methods, experiments, and fluid dynamics to understand the physics of fish robot swimming. I learnt and tested CFD development code to quantify the thrust performance of the robotic tuna with different body bending stiffness.
A summer of hard working allow me to present my research at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics in November 2018 in Atlanta.
The research is a joint effort with another lab at the University of Virginia. Our goals is to create an accurate Engineering Model of real fish that serves as a research platform to understand more on the flow physics. Our partners are able to create a tuna fish robot swimming. My role for this research is using an in-house CFD to analyze the fluids flow over the model and compare them with real fish movement. I then can give recommendations to our partner lab to improve on their robot model.
Overall, the whole process including three main steps: modeling, simulations and validations using PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry).
Below will be have some pictures from the slides that I presented at the conference.
