On the Hydrodynamics of Rowing Oars and Blade Design

A theoretical analysis is derived for the hydrodynamics of rowing from the catch part of the rowing stroke to the release. It also gives an empirical formula for the aerobic power output for athletes as function of performance time. Two oar blade designs are introduced, i.e. a commercial design for reference use and a proposed design of cubic parabolic shape. Both blades are regarded as flat plates of equal blade area. The obtained results gives the polar diagram (lift and drag coefficients versus angle of attack) for both blade designs and can conclude that the normal force on the blades are favourable higher for the new design. The theoretical results are confirmed by computational fluid dynamics(CFD) analysis. The CFD analysis give further information on the flow field details and indicates how vortex generation is related to the oar blade performance.