Meeting Abstract
The peduncle of thunniform swimmers provides a region of interest when studying the swimming mechanism of these animals. The degree of freedom located there would seem to play a large role in influencing swimming performance, and we hypothesized that the rotation that the peduncle allows does significantly improve performance, as determined by metrics such as swimming speed, power consumption, and economy. Using a custom-built rig that replicates a free-swimming environment within a flow tank, we flapped biological samples of thunniform fins and flukes with the peduncle in both free and constrained conditions, while recording the data necessary to determine the above information, as well as high-resolution video. A comparison of the results shows improved performance from the rigid peduncle to the flexible and highlights the importance of the joint, particularly if the swimming mechanism is to be emulated. The video can aid in the reconstruction of the flow field using computational fluid dynamics, so that the improved performance can be understood on the most fundamental level.
