Parametric Study of a Fully Passive Oscillating Foil on a Swinging Arm

Dominic Cloutier, Mathieu Olivier and Guy Dumas ()
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Dominic Cloutier: CFD Laboratory LMFN, Département de Génie Mécanique, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Mathieu Olivier: CFD Laboratory LMFN, Département de Génie Mécanique, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Guy Dumas: CFD Laboratory LMFN, Département de Génie Mécanique, Université Laval, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 5, 1-29

Abstract: A NACA 0015 airfoil is connected to a swinging arm by springs and dampers and is let loose in an incompressible and viscous flow at a Reynolds number of 3.9 × 10 6 . The foil operates in a power-extracting regime and is free to pitch about a pivot that is itself swinging on a circular path; this contraption is called a fully passive oscillating-foil turbine on a swinging arm. This study explores the potential of four different foil configurations: with the swinging arm being either upstream or downstream of its pivot, and with or without the use of gears to control the equilibrium position of the foil with respect to the flow. The results show that the swinging arm concept offers similar performances, i.e., efficiency and power coefficient, as the railed turbine. Indeed, with arm lengths from 3 to 10 chords, efficiency values near 55 % and power coefficients reaching 1.57 are obtained. Both the railed and the swinging arm turbines can operate under either a stall-flutter or a coupled-flutter instability. However, it is found that the geared models are the only ones suited when the driving mechanism is the coupled-flutter instability while both geared and gearless configurations are effective under the stall-flutter instability.

Keywords: renewable energy; CFD; turbine; fully-passive; oscillating-foil; URANS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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