A Prototype of a biomimetic scallop robot with bivalve propulsion and a hydrodynamic model for its velocity

Cheng-Hsien  Lin; Cheng-Chuan  Lin; Pei-Chun  Lin; Fu-Ling  Yang

doi:10.6180/jase.202508_28(8).0020

A Prototype of a biomimetic scallop robot with bivalve propulsion and a hydrodynamic model for its velocity

Cheng-Hsien Lin, Cheng-Chuan Lin, Pei-Chun Lin , and Fu-Ling YangThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan 106, R.O.C.

Received: January 31, 2018
Accepted: February 3, 2018
Publication Date: November 24, 2024

Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.

Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.202508_28(8).0020

This work presents the development, test, and analysis of a scallop robot prototype that generates jet propulsion with cyclic bivalve clapping motion. Through observing the real scallop swimming and understanding of its organ function, the robot was made of a streamlined fiberglass lower shell and a flat Plexiglas upper disk driven to clap periodically by a built-in RC motor and crank-slider four-bar linkage. Two jet holes were created at the rear side of the lower shell and a water guide towards the jet holes were created by silica gel to mimic the cavity between the mantle and adductor muscle of a real scallop. The robot performance was evaluated by its forward velocity U(t) and systematic experiments were conducted to study how the cycle-averaged velocity varies with the clapping frequency and amplitude. A complementing hydrodynamic model is also developed for the scallop motion. A general trend that U increased with the clapping frequency was observed from both the experimental data and the model prediction but more complex correlation with the clapping amplitude was revealed. As a result, the bivalve propulsion implemented in the current scallop robot is feasible but requires weight reduction and improvement on flow manipulation.

Keywords: Biomimetic Scallop Robot; Bivalve Propulsion; Hydrodynamic Model

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