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Animal Locomotion

  • Book
  • © 2010

Overview

Editors:
  1. Graham K. Taylor

    1. Dept. Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

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  2. Michael S. Triantafyllou

    1. Dept. Mechanical Engineering, Center for Ocean Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

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  3. Cameron Tropea

    1. FB 16 Maschinenbau, FG Strömungslehre und Aerodynamik, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

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  • Reports recent experimental investigations into the physics of animal locomotion
  • Contributes to the applicability of the principles of animal flying and swimming to biomimetics
  • Written from the experts in this field

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Table of contents (33 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

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  2. The Hydrodynamics of Swimming

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Swimming hydrodynamics: ten questions and the technical approaches needed to resolve them

      • George V. Lauder
      Pages 3-15

    3. A potential-flow, deformable-body model for fluid-structure interactions with compact vorticity: application to animal swimming measurements

      • Jifeng Peng, John O. Dabiri
      Pages 17-26

    4. Wake visualization of a heaving and pitching foil in a soap film

      • Florian T. Muijres, David Lentink
      Pages 27-35

    5. A harmonic model of hydrodynamic forces produced by a flapping fin

      • David N. Beal, Promode R. Bandyopadhyay
      Pages 37-44

    6. Flowfield measurements in the wake of a robotic lamprey

      • Marcus Hultmark, Megan Leftwich, Alexander J. Smits
      Pages 45-52

    7. Impulse generated during unsteady maneuvering of swimming fish

      • Brenden P. Epps, Alexandra H. Techet
      Pages 53-62

    8. Do trout swim better than eels? Challenges for estimating performance based on the wake of self-propelled bodies

      • Eric D. Tytell
      Pages 63-74

    9. Time resolved measurements of the flow generated by suction feeding fish

      • Steven W. Day, Timothy E. Higham, Peter C. Wainwright
      Pages 75-86

    10. Powered control mechanisms contributing to dynamically stable swimming in porcupine puffers (Teleostei: Diodon holocanthus)

      • Alexis M. Wiktorowicz, Dean V. Lauritzen, Malcolm S. Gordon
      Pages 87-97

    11. Fluid dynamics of self-propelled microorganisms, from individuals to concentrated populations

      • Luis H. Cisneros, Ricardo Cortez, Christopher Dombrowski, Raymond E. Goldstein, John O. Kessler
      Pages 99-115

    12. Swimming by microscopic organisms in ambient water flow

      • M. A. R. Koehl, Matthew A. Reidenbach
      Pages 117-130

    13. Water-walking devices

      • David L. Hu, Manu Prakash, Brian Chan, John W. M. Bush
      Pages 131-140

    14. Flapping flexible fish

      • Robert G. Root, Hayden-William Courtland, William Shepherd, John H. Long Jr
      Pages 141-159

    15. Vortex dynamics in the wake of a mechanical fish

      • Christoph Brücker, Horst Bleckmann
      Pages 161-172

    16. Investigation of flow mechanism of a robotic fish swimming by using flow visualization synchronized with hydrodynamic force measurement

      • Guang-Kun Tan, Gong-Xin Shen, Shuo-Qiao Huang, Wen-Han Su, Yu Ke
      Pages 173-183

  3. The Physics of Flying

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 185-185
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    2. PIV-based investigations of animal flight

      • Geoffrey R. Spedding, Anders Hedenström
      Pages 187-201

    3. Wing–wake interaction reduces power consumption in insect tandem wings

      • Fritz-Olaf Lehmann
      Pages 203-213
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Keywords

About this book

The physical principles of swimming and flying in animals are intriguingly different from those of ships and airplanes. The study of animal locomotion therefore holds a special place not only at the frontiers of pure fluid dynamics research, but also in the applied field of biomimetics, which aims to emulate salient aspects of the performance and function of living organisms. For example, fluid dynamic loads are so significant for swimming fish that they are expected to have developed efficient flow control procedures through the evolutionary process of adaptation by natural selection, which might in turn be applied to the design of robotic swimmers. And yet, sharply contrasting views as to the energetic efficiency of oscillatory propulsion – especially for marine animals – demand a careful assessment of the forces and energy expended at realistic Reynolds numbers. For this and many other research questions, an experimental approach is often the most appropriate methodology. This holds as much for flying animals as it does for swimming ones, and similar experimental challenges apply – studying tethered as opposed to free locomotion, or studying the flow around robotic models as opposed to real animals. This book provides a wide-ranging snapshot of the state-of-the-art in experimental research on the physics of swimming and flying animals. The resulting picture reflects not only upon the questions that are of interest in current pure and applied research, but also upon the experimental techniques that are available to answer them.

Reviews

From the reviews:

“This book is a collection of biomechanics locomotion papers, broadly grouped into ‘those that swim’, and ‘those that fly’. … Engineering-based research is strongly threaded throughout the book. … The variety of research being carried out in this sub-section of biomechanics is fairly represented and for those wishing to find out some of the recent advances in the field, this is an excellent starting point.” (Anna Carruthers, Aeronautical Journal, June, 2011)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Dept. Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Graham K. Taylor

  • Dept. Mechanical Engineering, Center for Ocean Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

    Michael S. Triantafyllou

  • FB 16 Maschinenbau, FG Strömungslehre und Aerodynamik, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Cameron Tropea

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Animal Locomotion

  • Editors: Graham K. Taylor, Michael S. Triantafyllou, Cameron Tropea

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11633-9

  • Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

  • eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-642-11632-2Published: 17 May 2010

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-662-51972-1Published: 23 August 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-642-11633-9Published: 20 March 2010

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 443

  • Additional Information: Originally published as special issue "Swimming (Vol. 43 Issue 5) und Flying (Vol. 46 Issue 5)" of the Experiments in Fluids Journal.

  • Topics: Fluid- and Aerodynamics, Engineering Fluid Dynamics, Biological and Medical Physics, Biophysics

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