English

Physics of rowing oars

Popular Physics 2019-04-23 v1 Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

In each rowing sport, the oars have their very own characteristics most of the time selected through a long time experience. Here we address experimentally and theoretically the problem of rowing efficiency as function of row lengths and blades sizes. In contrast with previous studies which consider imposed kinematics, we set an imposed force framework which is closer to human constraints. We find that optimal row lengths and blades sizes depend on sports and athletes strength, and provide an optimisation scheme.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.09338,
  title  = {Physics of rowing oars},
  author = {Romain Labbé and Jean-Philippe Boucher and Christophe Clanet and Michael Benzaquen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.09338},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

17 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:45:05.530Z