Shang-Chieh Ting

A passerine spreads its tail to facilitate a rapid recovery of its body posture during hovering.

We demonstrate experimentally that a passerine exploits tail spreading to intercept the downward flow induced by its wings to facilitate the recovery of its posture. The periodic spreading of its tail by the White-eye bird exhibits a phase correlation with both wingstroke motion and body oscillation during hovering flight. During a downstroke, a White-eyes body undergoes a remarkable pitch-down motion, with the tail undergoing an upward swing. This pitch-down motion becomes appropriately suppressed at the end of the downstroke; the birds body posture then recovers gradually to its original status. Employing digital particle-image velocimetry, we show that the strong downward flow induced by downstroking the wings serves as an external jet flow impinging upon the tail, providing a depressing force on the tail to counteract the pitch-down motion of the birds body. Spreading of the tail enhances a rapid recovery of the body posture because increased forces are experienced. The maximum force experienced by a spread tail is approximately 2.6 times that of a non-spread tail.

Three-dimensional numerical simulation of hydrodynamic interactions between pectoral-fin vortices and body undulation in a swimming fish

We investigated numerically the hydrodynamic interactions between pectoral-fin vortices and body undulation in a fish swimming with carangiform locomotion at a Reynolds number of 3.3 × 104; the three-dimensional, viscous, incompressible, Navier-Stokes equations were solved with a finite-volume method. For a fish swimming with the pectoral fins abducted, we characterized the wake flow structures, forces, and power consumption with respect to various Strouhal numbers. The numerical results reveal that a pair of vortices is formed immediately behind the abducted pectoral fins of a swimming fish. There exist hydrodynamic interactions between the pectoral-fin vortices and the undulating fish body. For Strouhal numbers in a range 0.2–0.8, the body undulation impedes the shedding of pectoral-fin vortices, resulting in vortices closely attached to the pectoral fins. In contrast, for Strouhal number = 0.1, the pectoral-fin vortices are shed from the pectoral fins and drift downstream. The low-pressure suction forc...