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Category: fluid-structure interaction

bio-inspired engineering / cyber-physical systems / fish locomotion / fluid-structure interaction / underwater vehicles

Tunable stiffness enables fast and efficient swimming in fish-like robots

Fish are thought to adjust their tail stiffness to swim efficiently over a wide range of speeds, but how they tune stiffness has been a mystery. We derived a model that combines fluid …

fluid-structure interaction / ground effect / Micro Aerial Vehicles

Influence of the ground, ceiling, and sidewall on micro-quadrotors

Because of their small size and agility, quadrotors could revolutionize search-and-rescue or terrain-mapping missions. However, to do so, they have to operate in confined spaces such as rubble corridors or …

bio-inspired engineering / fluid-structure interaction

How lovebirds maneuver through crosswinds in the dark

Pilots need complex instruments and training to safely fly through gusts when their vision is deprived. In contrast, birds fly reliably over open water and at night, despite being more …

fluid-structure interaction / ground effect / Micro Aerial Vehicles

How Micro Aerial Vehicles could exploit ground and ceiling effects

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have the potential to revolutionize search-and-rescue, product delivery, aerial mapping, and weather sensing. Current models for how MAVs interact with solid boundaries are based on helicopters, …

bio-inspired engineering / fish locomotion / fluid-structure interaction / underwater vehicles

Scaling laws for 3D pitching hydrofoils

Building on our previous work on 2-D pitching airfoils, we explored how forces and torques scale for 3-D pitching airfoils. The terms we added to existing theories were inspired by …

fluid-structure interaction

Adaptive control of turbulence intensity

We used a zero-finding algorithm to tune the turbulence intensity downstream of a grid of spinning vanes in a wind tunnel. We then explored how the algorithm was affected by …

fluid-structure interaction

The inverted glass harp

A traditional “glass harp” is an array of wine glasses filled to various depths. We discovered that a single empty wine glass submerged in a bath of water can also …

bio-inspired engineering / fish locomotion / fluid-structure interaction / underwater vehicles

Optimizing the efficiency of flexible swimming panels

Simplified geometries can be used to isolate the effects of flexibility in swimming fish. Here we used an oscillating flexible rectangular panel to explore how efficiency is affected by frequency, …

bio-inspired engineering / fish locomotion / fluid-structure interaction / ground effect / underwater vehicles

Flexible panels produce more thrust near solid boundaries

We extended our work on rigid airfoils and discovered that flexible panels also produce more thrust near a solid boundary. This time, we checked swimming speed directly and confirmed that …

bio-inspired engineering / fish locomotion / fluid-structure interaction / underwater vehicles

Scaling the efficiency of flexible swimming panels

Simplified geometries can be used to isolate the effects of flexibility in swimming fish. Here we used an oscillating flexible rectangular panel to explore how efficiency scales with panel stiffness …

fluid-structure interaction

An exact solution governing a nanofilm beneath an AFM probe

In Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), tiny forces on a probe are used to map the fine-scale structure of a surface. We re-derived the forces on AFM probes for the special …

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Categories

  • bio-inspired engineering
  • cyber-physical systems
  • engineering education
  • fin-fin interactions
  • fish locomotion
  • fluid-structure interaction
  • ground effect
  • Micro Aerial Vehicles
  • underwater vehicles
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