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School cohesion, speed and efficiency are modulated by the swimmers flapping motion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2021

Sina Heydari Open the ORCID record for Sina Heydari [Opens in a new window]  and
Eva Kanso Open the ORCID record for Eva Kanso [Opens in a new window]
Sina Heydari
Affiliation:
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA90089, USA
Eva Kanso*
Affiliation:
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA90089, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

Fish schools are ubiquitous in marine life. Although flow interactions are thought to be beneficial for schooling, their exact effects on the speed, energetics and stability of the group remain elusive. Recent numerical simulations and experimental models suggest that flow interactions stabilize in-tandem formations of flapping foils. Here, we employ a minimal vortex sheet model that captures salient features of the flow interactions among flapping swimmers, and we study the free swimming of a pair of in-line swimmers driven with identical heaving or pitching motions. We find that, independent of the flapping mode, heaving or pitching, the follower passively stabilizes at discrete locations in the wake of the leader, consistent with the heaving foil experiments, but pitching swimmers exhibit tighter and more cohesive formations. Further, in comparison to swimming alone, pitching motions increase the energetic efficiency of the group while heaving motions result in a slight increase in the swimming speed. A deeper analysis of the wake of a single swimmer sheds light on the hydrodynamic mechanisms underlying pairwise formations. These results recapitulate that flow interactions provide a passive mechanism that promotes school cohesion, and afford novel insights into the role of the flapping mode in controlling the emergent properties of the school.

JFM classification

Biological Fluid Dynamics: Swimming/flying Nonlinear Dynamical Systems: Low-dimensional models Wakes/Jets: Wakes
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 922 , 10 September 2021 , A27
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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Heydari and Kanso supplementary movie

Flow interactions in pairs of heaving, pitching, and simultaneously heaving and pitching swimmers lead to stable formations

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