Experimental Investigations of Elastic Tail Propulsion at Low Reynolds Number
Soft Condensed Matter
2008-10-02 v1 Fluid Dynamics
Abstract
A simple way to generate propulsion at low Reynolds number is to periodically oscillate a passive flexible filament. Here we present a macroscopic experimental investigation of such a propulsive mechanism. A robotic swimmer is constructed and both tail shape and propulsive force are measured. Filament characteristics and the actuation are varied and resulting data are quantitatively compared with existing linear and nonlinear theories.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0606527,
title = {Experimental Investigations of Elastic Tail Propulsion at Low Reynolds Number},
author = {Tony S. Yu and Eric Lauga and A. E. Hosoi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0606527},
year = {2008}
}