Related papers: Optimal Strouhal number for swimming animals
Fish display remarkable swimming capabilities through the coordinated interaction of the body and caudal fin, yet the potential role of a passively pitching tail in enhancing hydrodynamic performance remains unresolved. In this work, we…
In nature, many unicellular organisms are able to swim with the help of beating filaments, where local energy input leads to cooperative undulatory beating motion. Here, we investigate by employing reinforcement learning how undulatory…
The unsteady characteristics of the flow over thick flatback airfoils have been investigated by means of CFD calculations. Sandia airfoils which have 35% maximum thickness with three different trailing edge thicknesses were selected. The…
Motivated by the swimming of sperm in the non-Newtonian fluids of the female mammalian reproductive tract, we examine the swimming of filaments in the nonlinear viscoelastic Upper Convected Maxwell model. We obtain the swimming velocity and…
We design and test an octopus-inspired flexible hull robot that demonstrates outstanding fast-starting performance. The robot is hyper-inflated with water, and then rapidly deflates to expel the fluid so as to power the escape maneuver.…
We develop a numerical scheme to determine which planar snake motions are optimal for locomotory efficiency, across a wide range of frictional parameter space. For a large coefficient of transverse friction, we find that retrograde…
The impact of spanwise flexibility on the propulsion performance of two foils arranged in tandem and subjected to a prescribed sinusoidal heaving motion has been studied at a Reynolds number of 100. This comprises a wide range of natural…
The swimming of an assembly of rigid spheres immersed in a viscous fluid of infinite extent is studied in low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The instantaneous swimming velocity and rate of dissipation are expressed in terms of the…
We present a unified discussion of three types of near-spherical amoeboid microswimmers, driven by periodic, axially symmetric, achiral deformations (swim strokes): a solid deformable body, a vesicle with incompressible fluid membrane, and…
The propulsion of a flapping wing or foil is emblematic of bird flight and fish swimming. Previous studies have identified hallmarks of the propulsive dynamics that have been attributed to unsteady effects such as the formation and shedding…
Run-and-tumble is a basic model of persistent motion and a motility strategy widespread in micro-organisms and individual cells. In many natural settings, movement occurs in the presence of confinement. While accumulation at the surface has…
Natural swimmers usually perform undulations to propel themselves and perform a range of maneuvers. These include various biological species ranging from micro-sized organisms to large-sized fishes that undulate at typical kinematic…
The role of passive body dynamics on the kinematics of swimming micro-organisms in complex fluids is investigated. Asymptotic analysis of small amplitude motions of a finite-length undulatory swimmer in a Stokes-Oldroyd-B fluid is used to…
The spanwise organization of the flow over a thick airfoil is investigated using surface pressure measurements for a range of angles of attack around maximum lift and high Reynolds numbers (1 Million). Locally strong pressure fluctuations,…
Fish perform various propulsive maneuvers while swimming by generating traveling waves along their bodies and producing thrust through tail strokes. Anguilliform swimmers spread motion along the body, while carangiform swimmers' motion is…
Traditional locomotion strategies become ineffective at low Reynolds numbers, where viscous forces predominate over inertial forces. To adapt, microorganisms have evolved specialized structures like cilia and flagella for efficient…
Human motor activities are known to exhibit scale-free long-term correlated fluctuations over a wide range of timescales, from few to thousands of seconds. The fundamental processes originating such fractal-like behavior are not yet…
Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…
Peritrichous bacteria synchronize and bundle their flagella to actively swim while disruption of the bundle leads to tumbling. It is still not known whether the number of flagella represents an evolutionary adaptation towards optimizing…
The last few decades have led to the rise of research focused on propulsion and control systems for bio-inspired unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), which provide more maneuverable alternatives to traditional UUVs in underwater missions.…