Overview
- 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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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.
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Keywords
Table of contents (33 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Hydrodynamics of Swimming
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Front Matter
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The Physics of Flying
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Front Matter
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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
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