Assessment of the Effectiveness of Conventional Rudder against Fish Tail and Tubercle Rudders at Various Angles of Attack

The development of maritime surface ships has become a significant topic in naval architecture due to the challenges posed by collisions and ship grounding. Special rudders, such as flaps and schilling rudders, are being developed to improve ship maneuverability and address carbon neutrality and environmental damage. Biomimicry, the study of replicating living/nature animals, aims to learn how to copy their systems, methods, forms, and structures, using them as eco-friendly and sustainable design solutions. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is increasingly being used in ship hydrodynamics to simulate complex phenomena in rudder simulations. The effectiveness of rudder use is determined by analysing the drag and side force values with various angles of attack from 0° to 30° at an operational speed of 12 knots. The most effective side force-to-drag ratio was achieved when the rudder was tilted at an angle of 5°. The fishtail and tubercle models have a more stochastic distribution, with the fishtail rudder having 5.1% greater performance effectiveness than the conventional rudder. The biomimetic method can improve the performance of wing-like structures, as seen with humpback whales operating in a marine environment similar to certain designed marine systems.