Meeting Abstract

41.4  Sunday, Jan. 5 11:00  Fluid scaling effects near the ctenes of ctenophores MILLER, L. A.*; FOVARGUE, L.; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute lam9@unc.edu

A distinctive feature of the phylum Ctenophora are their comb plates or ctenes. The ctenes are groups of cilia that are fused at their base to form plates and are used to direct flow for swimming and feeding. An interesting fluid dynamic feature is that the ctenes operate at Reynolds numbers on the order of 10. Unlike other ciliary forms of locomotion, ctene driven flows have significant inertia. In this presentation, flow around the ctenophore Mnemiopsis macrydi is quantified using particle image velocimetry. The bulk flow generated by the eight rows of comb plates and the flows generated near the ctenes themselves are measured. The spatially and temporally reconstructed flow fields are then used to validate two- and three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of the fluid. These simulations are performed using an adaptive version of the immersed boundary method, IBAMR, to solve the fully-coupled fluid structure interaction problem. The effects of Reynolds number and ctene flexibility on the formation of vortices and the amount of fluid transport generated are quantified.