Session: IMECE Undergraduate Research and Design Exposition

Paper Number: 113759

113759 - Drag Force Analysis on South American River Fish, a Comparison Case Study 

Bio inspired engineering, as well as biomimetics are recent research interest sparking on many engineering fields. Ship design based on this concept are showing improvements in the reduction of drag force. Some aircraft designs are too based on mimicking nature. At the microscopic level, the applications in speedos from mimicking the shark skin is one of the successful results from this activity. Is in this context this work looked into fish drag force analysis.
Different species of river fish at the Parana River, located in South America, are being analyzed in this study. In order to determine the drag force, a series of simulation, this is, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) work was conducted in this investigation. There were collected actual samples of fish to be three dimensionally scanned. Once this step was concluded, all digital models were conditioned to be able to run CFD simulations. This is, surfaces were smoothed computationally in order to avoid excessive mesh elements. It is important to mention here that boundary conditions were fixed on all cases. The goal is to be able to compare drag forces between species under equal conditions. This analysis was conducted using a single-phase computational tool, no FSI (Fluid Structure Interaction) was considered. By conducting this research, it was possible to determine fish classification according to its drag coefficient. An attempt to find a correlation between this coefficient and species living environment (depth, water speed, temperature) was unsuccessful. However, a correlation between aspect ratio and drag coefficient was successfully found. In all cases, the relative size of each specimen was small. The reason for this was to perform in future works an experimental measurement of this drag force using a three dimensional printed samples. The selected species were mandi'i (Pimelodus maculatus), Corvina (Pachyurus bonariensis), and Piraña (Pygocentrus nattereri).
More species are available, however as mentioned before, the limitation of a 3D printer printing size constrained us to choose the species with a relatively small dimensions. This work set a path for a more comprehensive analysis. Effect on drag force due to fish skin configurations were not analyzed. Water particles were not considered in this simulation. Single fluid water was used as working fluid. Finally, it is important to mention that, in this work no endanger fish species were taken for analysis, nor any other animal were subjected to unnecessary slaughter. The scanned fish were then used as food or human consumption.

Presenting Author: Daniel Allo Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion

Presenting Author Biography: Paraguayan, electromechanical engineering student at the Faculty of Engineering of the National University of Asunción (FIUNA)

Authors:

Leila Jimenez Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Daniel Allo Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Elias Villalba Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Ana Leon Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Cristian Ortiz Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Diego Aquino Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Rodrigo Cantero Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Jonathan Ramirez Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Luis Martinez Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion
Jorge Kurita Facultad de Ingenieria - Universidad Nacional de Asuncion