For the Olin Robot lab's Robotuna project, I worked on using
CFD to optimize AUV hydrofoils to delay stall. These simulations are made more
comlex by extensive 3-dimensional flow, extensive turbulent flow, and the large
influence of viscosity effects at the low Reynolds Numbers the hydrofoils operate
at.
Typical mesh density near foil
My contributions include:
- Designed and created CAD for stall-delay hydrofoils for marine robotics applications
- Evaluated designs in Ansys Fluent CFD for stall performance
- Learned how to use Solidworks lofts for complex geometries to capture stall-delay
features on hydrofoils
Our optimized hydrofoil design had very significant improvement in stall performance over
the controll fin, stalling at double the angle of attack of the un-optimized design.
