Animal Locomotion

1. Front Matter

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2. The Hydrodynamics of Swimming

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   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

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.

• Pitch
• development
• dynamics
• fish
• fluid dynamics
• vortices
• fluid- and aerodynamics

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)

• 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

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