Underwater drones developed by IIT Madras
Posted on: 04/Jan/2017 5:29:12 PM
Scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, IIT-M, have developed a real life-inspired propulsion system for underwater drones or unmanned underwater vehicles, UUVs. These include fin-like blades inspired by penguins, turtles and fishes and whiplash-like rudders.
The underwater vehicles will be able to navigate like the aquatic animals without creating any disturbance, thus incorporating a natural stealth feature, making them hard to be detected.
Speaking about this, the team at IIT Madras` Department of Ocean Engineering said, The IIT-Madras team was inspired by two aquatic animals – penguins and fish, since they have better hydrodynamics and cause less disturbance in water. Thus, there are two propulsion systems – penguin-inspired and fish-inspired.
The penguin-inspired propulsion system features two fins which use the pressure difference between the upper and the lower surface of the fins to generate propulsion, rotating and swinging to move forward. The fish-inspired propulsion system has two fins near the fore end and a tail fin. Both the pectoral and tail fins help propel and manoeuvre but the tail fins give larger thrust. We tested several parameters including self propulsion, thrust force, flapping amplitude, flapping frequency, forward speed, lift and drag.
