Biomimetic motions are helpful to underwater vehicles and new conception airplanes design. The lattice Boltzmann method with an immersed boundary method technique is used to reveal the propulsion and lift enhancement mechanism of biomimetic motions. The flow past a sphere and an ellipsoidal flapping wing were validated respectively by comparing with other numerical methods. Then a single flapping wing and three flapping wings in a tandem arrangement are accomplished respectively. It founds that the mean thrust coefficient of three plate wings is bigger than the one of the single plate wing. Three ellipsoidal wings and single ellipsoidal wing are compared. It shows that the single ellipsoidal wing has larger thrust coefficients than the three ellipsoidal wings. Ellipsoidal flapping wing and plate wing were further compared to investigate the influence of wing shape. It indicates the mean thrust coefficient of the ellipsoidal wing is bigger than the plate wing.

This work is concerned with the modelling of the interaction of fluid flow with flexibly supported rigid bodies. The fluid flow is modelled by Lattice-Boltzmann Method, coupled to a set of ordinary differential equations describing the dynamics of the solid body in terms its elastic and damping properties. The time discretization of the body dynamics is performed via the Time Discontinuous Galerkin Method. Several numerical examples are presented and highlight the robustness and efficiency of the proposed methodology, by means of comparisons with previously published results. The examples show that the present fluid-structure method is able to capture vortex- induced oscillations of flexibly-supported rigid body.