Mathematical Sciences: A Computational Model of Aquatic Animal Locomotion

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The proposer will apply computer modeling to the investigation of the fluid dynamics of aquatic animal propulsion. She will make extensive use of a newly-available research tool, the CRAY supercomputer. The proposer has developed a reliable computational model in two dimensions. The fluid motion is described by the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, and the immersed organism is comprised of a single filament undergoing time-dependent motion. On the size or position-dependency of the amplitude of the swimming motion the algorithm works for a very wide range of Reynolds numbers. This is the first computational study of aquatic animal locomotion which makes these claims. The major goal of this research is to extend this computational model to three dimensions. It is also proposed to improve the two- dimensional model by including a cell body attached to the undulating filament, and to study phase-locking between neighboring flagella. This work is pioneering in at least two respects: it is the first computational model of aquatic animal locomotion which solves the full Navier-Stokes equations and it makes extensive use of large-scale computational fluid techniques on a supercomputer.