Unsteady hydrodynamic forces acting on a robotic arm and its flow field during the crawl stroke

Biography

Hideki Takagi works at the University of Tsukuba teaching a course on biomechanics and swimming practice. He has been engaged in research on the hydrodynamical mechanism for generating thrust force during human swimming.

Synopsis

In a previous study, we conducted experiments in which we directly measured hydrodynamic forces, pressure distributions, and flow fields around a hand attached to a robotic arm (Takagi et al., 2013). In that study, we investigated simple 2D hand motions; nevertheless, a significant unsteady hydrodynamic phenomenon was observed that reveals the behaviour of certain kinds of vortices play an essential role in generating substantial unsteady hydrodynamic forces. In this study, we use a robotic arm and PIV to clarify the mechanisms by which unsteady forces are generated during 3D crawl-stroke-motions.