Flapping flight and swimming are increasingly studied due to both their intrinsic scientific richness and their applicability to novel robotic systems. Strip theory is often applied to flapping wings, but such modeling is only rigorously applicable in the limit of infinite aspect ratio (AR) where the geometry and kinematics are effectively uniform. This work compares the flow features and forces of strip theory and three-dimensional flapping foils, maintaining similitude in the rolling and twisting kinematics while varying the foil AR. We find the key influence of finite AR and spanwise varying kinematics is the generation of a time-periodic spanwise flow which stabilizes the vortex structures and enhances the dynamics at the foil root. An aspect-ratio correction for flapping foils is developed analogous to Prandtl finite wing theory, enabling future use of strip theory in analysis and design of finite aspect ratio flapping foils.

The importance of the leading-edge sweep angle of propulsive surfaces used by unsteady swimming and flying animals has been an issue of debate for many years, spurring studies in biology, engineering, and robotics with mixed conclusions. In this work, we provide results from three-dimensional simulations on single-planform finite foils undergoing tail-like (pitch-heave) and flipper-like (twist-roll) kinematics for a range of sweep angles covering a substantial portion of animals while carefully controlling all other parameters. Our primary finding is the negligible 0.043 maximum correlation between the sweep angle and the propulsive force and power for both tail-like and flipper-like motions. This indicates that fish tails and mammal flukes with similar range and size can have a large range of potential sweep angles without significant negative propulsive impact. Although there is a slight benefit to avoiding large sweep angles, this is easily compensated by adjusting the fin's motion parameters such as flapping frequency, amplitude and maximum angle of attack to gain higher thrust and efficiency.

Propulsive flapping foils are widely studied in the development of swimming and flying animal-like autonomous systems. Numerical studies in this topic are mainly two-dimensional (2-D) studies, as they are quicker and cheaper, but this inhibits the three-dimensional (3-D) evolution of the shed vortices from leading and trailing edges. In this work, we examine the similarities and differences between 2-D and 3-D simulations through a case study in order to evaluate the efficacy and limitations of using 2-D simulations to describe a 3-D system. We simulate an infinite-span NACA0016 foil in both two and three dimensions at a Reynolds number of 5300 and an angle of attack of 10^°. The foil is subject to prescribed heaving and pitching kinematics with varying trailing-edge deflection amplitude. Our primary finding is that the flow and forces are effectively 2-D at intermediate amplitude-based Strouhal numbers (, where is the free-stream velocity and is the flapping frequency), for heaving, for pitching and for coupled motion, while 3-D effects dominate outside of these ranges. These 2-D regions begin when the fluid energy induced by the flapping motion overcomes the 3-D vortex shedding found on a stationary foil, and the flow reverts back to 3-D when the strength of the shed vortices overwhelms the stabilising influence of viscous dissipation. These results indicate that 3-D to 2-D transitions or vice versa are a balance between the strength and stability of leading/trailing-edge vortices and the flapping energy. However, 2-D simulations can still be used for flapping flight/swimming studies provided that the flapping amplitude/frequency is within a given range.