Conclusion

In conclusion, the design proposed here could potentially overcome submarine 's propeller problems which could perform under low flow conditions, in confined spaces, near the surface and in unsteady flow. Turtle's method of propulsion system, which is through it's fins can overcome all this challenges making a more efficient submarine design.

For recommendation of excellent project, the design can be drawn out using Solid Work. Once the design in Solid Work has been done, it can goes through ANSYS analysis and CFD to see how the submarine with turtle's fins as propulsion system operate under fluid.

Reflection

Alvin Diong Wern Xiong

The creation of blog allowed me to learn so much about nature and inspire me to use them as solutions. Nature appear to provide more solution for engineering design challenges. Besides, the fins of turtle, I also discover that when the turtle are in upside down position, it uses it's neck to make it go back to it's original position which can be applied for further research in future for the application of in robot inspection. In addition, I also update the 'Novel Industry application suggestion'  by 'describes rational behind design'. Finally, I write down the conclusion and suggest 'future recommendation' for this project improvement.

Azzam Syafiq bin Samsuddin

By adopting a pet tortoise for this module and creating this blog, I had learned so much about how engineers use inspiration from the nature to solve engineering challenges. I am tasked with taking care of the pet for the whole duration of the semester, and I learn more to respect the abilities of my pet. They can move underwater with good agility and gracefulness. They can swim without exerting much effort using their efficient fins. This can certainly be adopted for underwater vehicles for increased maneuverability in underwater. From this whole project, I am more interested in looking to nature in solving engineering challenges, as they are usually more environmentally-friendly and time-proven.

Fadhli Hazim bin Abu Bakar

Creating the blog with the whole team throughout the semester opened my eyes to the amazing possibility in the field of biomimicry. Many real world problems could be solve by fully understanding the natural world around us. Adopting the turtles for the purpose of studying them really helped us in understanding how they perform certain tasks much better, and this contributes in adopting some features that is applicable. We were also able to come up with a novel design for a one man submarine for sea exploration purposes. We believe that the design can help solve current problems one man submarines and be an inspiration for other such designs.

Muhammad Akmal bin Zulkifli

Throughout the study I realize that nature can inspire a lot of amazing and unbelievable solution to the engineering challenges. By studying about the turtles I learn that this special creature possessed certain characteristics and function which can inspire us human in many aspects especially in the underwater movement which covered in the novel design article before. I sincerely hope that we can investigate more in terms of nature strategies and how they work so that we can solve problems arise in this world with better solution, inspired by nature.

Wandeh Elwon

The creation of this blog made me realize that there's a lot of biology based engineering solution available out there. For this project, we selected tortoise as our adopted pet and using the tortoise leg movement mechanism we decided to apply this concept into the submarine design. this idea doesnt stop here as there are many others potential concept from others biologocal organism that havent been investigate yet.

Novel Industry Application Suggestion

Most submarine uses propeller in the shape of fan to move the submarine.

A submarine propeller

However, the propeller are not suitable when it comes to low flow conditions, confined space, near the surfaces and in unsteady flow. Alternatives form of propulsion system need to be innovated to overcome this problem. Using turtle fin as propulsion system is one alternative to overcome this challenge. As mentioned in literature review, turtle's fins which shape like hydrofoil with it's skeleton consists of humerus and radius of short length with long phalanx allowed turtle to swim efficiently by decreasing the resistance from hydrofoil dynamic.

Pictures below show how's our design will look like.

                                                                         Novel design                                            


As can be seen, the shape of the submarine still remain the same. However, on each side of the submarine, there are two components which are like fins of the turtle. This shape fins will be the propeller where it will move sideways just like turtle to propel the submarine forward. Just like turtle fins, the shape of this components is created like turtle fins to create streamlined hydrofoil so that the submarine can move efficiently because the resistance for the hydrofoil dynamic swirl is reduced. On the fins component, it is also attached propeller like fans to help push the submarine forward.

Other possible novel application
Robot Inspection has been commonly used these days for the purposes of inspecting area which is difficult or human can not reached. However, there are times where the surface of the inspection area can be rough or uneven which cause the robot inspection to fall down or flip over. Having an mechanism which can assist robot inspection will help it to stand on ground again to continue it's inspection work. A turtle have the ability to flip over when it was in upside down position. Turtles have smooth feature and flat shells with longer neck as pivot to help get themselves into position. The uneven shell also create imbalance that help turtle roll back to it's feet. Video below show how a turtle flip over when in upside down position.

Using this feature and apply it to robot inspection,it allowed the robot inspection to go back to it's original position in case the robot inspection fell over in upside down position.

Others Example - BioInspiration

Hello lovely readers! We hope you are doing well. Our small turtles are doing as fine as ever.

This week we will be covering about an example by other studies that have performed on turtles. One of them is the Design and Implementation of a Biomimetic Turtle Hydrofoil for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, as mentioned in the previous post. The team of researchers for this study investigated on the design and possibility of implementation of a turtle hydrofoil for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle to replace the old propeller usually used for ships. Due to the agility of how turtles can easily move underwater, it would be beneficial for submariners if they posses the same degree of manoeuvrability for their submarines. 

In National University of Singapore (NUS), researchers created turtle-inspired robots for various underwater purposes. These very nimble and maneuverable robots can perform dangerous underwater tasks that are too hazardous for humans, such as detecting nuclear wastes and also at depths that are too high in pressure. Unlike typical diving vehicles such as submarines, these turtles do not have any ballast system, hence it is smaller and lighter, and able to carry bigger payloads so that it can perform complicated tasks such as surveillance in water quality of Singapore's reservoir. It can dive vertically, by using front and himb limb gait movements, similar to real turtles. 

Figure 1. The biomimetic turtle-inspired robot designed by NUS.

Another study on biomimetics of turtles is from the paper "Towards Amphibious Robots: Asymmetric Flapping Foil Motion Underwater Produces Large Thrust Efficiently" by Stephen Licht, Martin Wibawa, Franz S Hover and Michael S Triantafyllou from Massachussets Institute of Technology. They studied the swimming kinematics of a green sea turtle Chelonia Mydas and applied to the biomimetic vehicle the called Finnegan. The vehicle is 1.5 m long and 0.55 mm wide and propelled by four independently controlled high aspect ratio fins. After modification, the turning radius of Finnegan is 0.8 of its body length, which is a remarkable improvement. The fins of Finnegan were designed so that it is capable of moving in a two-degree of freedom motion. However the study found out that turtles has a third degree of motion but the researchers could not apply it onto Finnegan.

Literature Review

Hello again fellow readers!

Leo and Ralph are doing fine, they are in fact doing great! Both tortoises appear healthy and energetic. Also, we just changed the container that we used to keep them both.

One of them is inside the small purple container.

Anyway, in conjunction with the module's blog schedule, in this post we will see biomimetics studies that have been done by researchers that were inspired from turtles. One interesting study is the Design and Implementation of a Biomimetic Turtle Hydrofoil for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, by Davinia Font, Marcel Tresanchez, Cedric Siegentahler, Tomas Palleja, Merce Teixido, Cedric Pradalier and Jordi Palacin.

Basically, the study is about the design and implementation of a turtle hydrofoil for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). The most common AUV propulsion system is usually using propellers, however propellers are not suitable for some conditions, such as low flow conditions, in confined spaces, near the surface, and in unsteady flow. Hence, propulsion based on 'fins' are of great interest for maneuverability. The authors proposed turtle's propulsion methods.

An example of an AUV used by United States Navy.

Turtle's fins have a hydrofoil shape. The skeleton of the fin, which consists of thick humerus and radius, are short in length, while the phalanx is comparatively very long. These characteristics create a streamlined hydrofoil that is adapted to swim efficiently, as the resistance from the hydrofoil dynamic swirl is reduced. In addition to the fin's shape, the turtle's head has a pointy shape, able to reduce the forward resistance by adapting the position of its head relative to the navigation path. In other words, the head helps 'cut' through the water.

a) Oval path followed by the legs of a freshwater turtle.

b) Figure-of-eight path followed by the hydrofoils  of a sea turtle.

They conducted three experiments to study the feasibility of the concept. They performed computer simulations as well as physical experiments to determine the optimum angle of attack, propulsion path of hydrofoil, and the profile of water speed generated by the displacement of hydrofoil.The study concluded that the design of AUV can be further improved when using this biomimetic inspiration, specifically from turtles.

Say Hello to Our Ninja Turtles!

Hello again folks!

Now this is the time to introduce our test subjects to our beloved readers! For 'Adopt A Life' project, we decided to adopt two small freshwater terrapins (or small turtles, if you prefer) and raise them for the next 14 weeks. We bought these two small animals from a local pet shop. 

Say hello to Leo and Raph!

Friends stay together.

Close-up of our pet.

We could not pin-point the exact species of our terrapins, so we could not provide the specific species name. However since it is anatomically very close to the tortoise/turtle family, our study will focus on that group of reptiles.

Here's a fun question: what is the difference between tortoise, turtle, and terrapin? 

Well, scientists group all these animals under one name: Chelonian, animals that have bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs, acting as shields. 

But for the rest of us, the difference is just practically lingual. In the North America, 'turtle' is used to refer to all three. For the United Kingdom (and the rest of the English-speaking world), turtle is used to refer to sea-dwelling species. Tortoise is used for any land-dwelling, non-swimming chelonian. Terrapins are used to refer to the smaller version of these animals (like ours).

From left: turtle, tortoise, terrapin.

Anatomically, with the exception of size, they are all similar. The most striking characteristic is the shell, in which they can retract their heads and limbs into to protect them from predators, or just for shelter. When they swim in the water, they propel through the water by using the limbs. All of them can survive in and out of water, and all of the species are herbivores.

We also bought terrapin food for Leo and Raph. The food consists of soft, small pellets so the terrapins can easily chew them. They are made from fish meal, soy flour, wheat flour, oat flour and shrimp.

Food for champions.

That's all for today folks! See you next time :D

Hello Everyone!!

Hello people! :)

This blog dictates the 14 week journey of the study of a terrapin which is the pet of choice in the subject ENG 61703 Engineering and Biomimetics. The reason we choose this subject is due to our interest in studying the locomotion of these animals. In accordance to this blog, we would like to thank Dr. Yong Leng Chuan for being the ever understanding lecturer and Prof. Mushtak Al-Atabi for giving us this opportunity to embrace nature's beauty into our engineering capabilities. Hope you enjoy browsing through this enjoy as a token of our appreciation.

Welcome people, to our Biomimetics blog. This blog is part of the course requirement for Engineering and Biomimetics. Throughout our 14-week course, we will be chronicling a pet of our choice to study the possible real-life applications from its biology.

For the uninitiated, Biomimetics is the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. It is innovation inspired by nature, by learning how nature get things done, then utilizing what we have learned to improve human lives. The word 'biomimetics' itself is derived from Ancient Greek language, bio meaning life, and mimetics from mīmēsis which means imitation.

One of the most popular cases of biomimetics in our real life uses is the Velcro straps. A Swiss engineer by the name of George de Mestral was intrigued by how burrs (or seeds) of burdock plants kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur. When studied under a microscope, he noticed that there are hundreds of small 'hooks' on the burrs that can attach to any 'loops', such as clothing and animal hair. Then, he saw a possibility of utilizing the same mechanism for human use. After much studying and prototype, we know have the very familiar Velcro straps that are used in so many applications, from tying shoes to securing our bags.

Biomimetics aside, we believe we must give an introduction to who we are! Our group consist of five Mechanical Engineering students in Taylor's University. Led by the very handsome Sabahan, Wandeh Elwon, the rest of the group is 

Muhammad Akmal, 

Alvin Diong,

Fadhli Hazim 

and Azzam Syafiq.