We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Scaling macroscopic aquatic locomotion.
- Authors
Gazzola, Mattia; Argentina, Médéric; Mahadevan, L.
- Abstract
Inertial aquatic swimmers that use undulatory gaits range in length L from a few millimetres to 30 metres, across a wide array of biological taxa. Using elementary hydrodynamic arguments, we uncover a unifying mechanistic principle characterizing their locomotion by deriving a scaling relation that links swimming speed U to body kinematics (tail beat amplitude A and frequency ω) and fluid properties (kinematic viscosity ν). This principle can be simply couched as the power law Re ∼ Swα, where Re = UL/ν ≫ 1 and Sw = ωAL/ν, with α = 4/3 for laminar flows, and α = 1 for turbulent flows. Existing data from over 1,000 measurements on fish, amphibians, larvae, reptiles, mammals and birds, as well as direct numerical simulations are consistent with our scaling. We interpret our results as the consequence of the convergence of aquatic gaits to the performance limits imposed by hydrodynamics.
- Subjects
ANIMAL swimming; KINEMATIC viscosity; LAMINAR flow; BLUE whale; REYNOLDS number
- Publication
Nature Physics, 2014, Vol 10, Issue 10, p758
- ISSN
1745-2473
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/nphys3078