Sep 25, 2008 - 2West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania 19383, USA. 3University of CaliforniaâSanta Cruz, Santa Cruz,. California 95060, USA.
Digital particle image velocimetry of mammalian swimming Paul Legac, Timothy Wei, Frank Fish, Terrie Williams, Russell Mark et al. Citation: Phys. Fluids 20, 091105 (2008); doi: 10.1063/1.2973663 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2973663 View Table of Contents: http://pof.aip.org/resource/1/PHFLE6/v20/i9 Published by the AIP Publishing LLC.
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PHYSICS OF FLUIDS 20, 091105 共2008兲
FIG. 1. 共Color兲 共enhanced online兲.
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Digital particle image velocimetry of mammalian swimming Paul Legac,1 Timothy Wei,1 Frank Fish,2 Terrie Williams,3 Russell Mark,4 and Sean Hutchison5 1
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, USA West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania 19383, USA 3 University of California–Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95060, USA 4 USA Swimming, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80910, USA 5 King Aquatics Club, Seattle, Washington 98101, USA 共Received 20 November 2007; published online 25 September 2008兲 关DOI: 10.1063/1.2973663兴 2
In order to elucidate the propulsive mechanics of large mammals 共i.e., dolphins and humans兲 the standard digital particle image velocimetry 共DPIV兲 setup has been modified 1070-6631/2008/20共9兲/091105/1/$23.00
to be safely used on mammals. Microbubbles 共⬍1 mm兲 are used as the seeding particles and sunlight or flood lights as the illumination source. Figure 1 is a DPIV image sequence of a bottlenose dolphin swimming freely in its tank at a constant velocity. Vortex shedding from the dolphin’s tail can be seen in the final frame. Thrust production is directly tied to vortex strength through the Kutta–Joukowski theorem. For the case shown in Fig. 1, the calculated thrust is 667 N, which is 3 times greater than the maximum for a human swimmer performing a dolphin kick. Figure 2 is a composite DPIV image of Megan Jendrick 共2000 Olympic gold medalist in the 100 m breaststroke兲 performing the breaststroke in a flume. Velocity field data, as shown, are used to study the flow field around the swimmers, leading to technique improvements in humans and possible advances in biomimetics.
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© 2008 American Institute of Physics
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