Development Of A Mechanical Fish Prototype With Various Tail Platforms

The study of biomimetic robot has been popular among researchers in recent decade. This thesis describes the research done on mechanical fish with various tail platforms. The mechanical fish prototype is designed using SOLIDWORKS 2019 and is specified with PLA material. The mechanical fish designed consists of 8 integrated parts that fits each other consisting of 57 faces throughout the model. Type of tail for the mechanical fish is chosen to be truncate type of tail which was designed with 3 sizes to validate the purpose of the study. The sizes used for the truncate tail is 11cm ,8cm, and 5cm. Since the experiment is deduced as half simulation and half experimental. The mechanical fish prototype is printed using Anycube Mega S 3D printer. Two servos are fitted in the mid body section and back end of the mechanical fish. An Arduino board is used to program the angle of deflection of the body and tail end of the prototype to the servos and a 9V battery is used as a power source. Three tail platform with various size is 3D printed as mold and silicon is poured into them to create three silicon tails with different sizes with a range of tail length of 5cm, 8cm and 11 cm. The main objective of this research is to measure the drag performance of the mechanical fish. The analysis of the prototype is performed using ANSYS 2021. The servos are programmed to deflect at an angle of 15,20 and 25 degree at mid body and tail end respectively. The same type of movement is programmed in ANSYS 2021 with different type of tail to compute the data of total drag that is acting upon the fish when it is projected with water speed of 0.28 m/s which mimics the speed of Gourami fish. The data result is showed and justified and the best model with less drag is chosen to be printed as a mechanical fish model. Thus, this experiment is essential to the study of mechanical fish using 3 joint mechanisms as less research material is available for it