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Article: New fluids engineering study findings reported from S. Alben and co-authors.
- Article from:
- Journal of Technology
- Article date:
- November 3, 2009
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"We formulate a new theoretical model for the swimming of a flexible body in a vortex street. We consider the class of periodic travelling-wave body motions, in the limit of small amplitude," researchers in the United States report.
"We calculate the output power provided to the body by thrust forces, and the input power done against pressure forces, as functions of the aspect ratio and strength of the vortex street. We then formulate two optimization problems. In the first, we determine the body wave which provides maximum output power for fixed amplitude. We find a closed-form solution with a transition from power law to exponential decay of output power as the ...