Wake and aeroelasticity of a flexible pitching foil.

A flexible foil undergoing pitching oscillations is studied experimentally in a wind tunnel with different imposed free stream velocities. The chord-based Reynolds number is in the range 1600-4000, such that the dynamics of the system is governed by inertial forces and the wake behind the foil exhibits the reverse Bénard-von Kármán vortex street characteristic of flapping-based propulsion. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements are performed to examine the flow around the foil, whilst the deformation of the foil is also tracked.