An analysis of a swimmer’s passive wave resistance using experimental data and CFD simulations

The passive resistance of a swimmer on the free surface has previously been researched experimentally. The contribution of wave resistance to total drag for a swimmer with a velocity around 2.0 m.s-1 was found to vary from 5% for Vorontsov and Rumyantsev (2000), to 21 % for Toussaint et al. (2002) and up to 60% according to Vennell et al. (2006). The exact resistance breakdown of a swimmer remains unknown due to difficulties in the direct measurement of wave resistance. As noted by Sato and Hino (2010), this lack of experimental data makes it difficult to validate numerical simulations of swimmers on the free surface.This study is therefore aimed at presenting direct measurements of a swimmer’s total drag and wave resistance, along with the longitudinal wave cuts which may be used to validate numerical simulations. In this paper, experimental data of a swimmer’s resistance are presented at two different velocities (case 1 = 1.7 m.s-1 and case 2 = 2.1 m.s-1). Total drag was measured using force block dynamometers mounted on a custom-built tow rig (Webb et al., 2011). Moreover, a longitudinal wave cut method was used to directly evaluate wave resistance (Eggers, 1955).The two conditions tested were simulated using the open-source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code OpenFOAM (OpenFOAM® (2013)). The body geometry is a generic human form, morphed into the correct attitude and depth using the above- and under-water video footage recorded during the experiment. 3D Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) simulations were performed using the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method to solve the air-water interface. A similar numerical technique was used by Banks (2013a) to assess the passive resistance of a swimmer. Two cases were simulated and the error in total drag compared to the experimental data was found to be 1 % and 22 % respectively. In this paper, the resistance components over a swimmer’s typical range of speeds are investigated and compared with the experimental dat

Design and Control of a Flight-Style AUV with Hovering Capability

The small flight-style Delphin AUV is designed to evaluate the performance of a long range survey AUV with the additional capability to hover and manoeuvre at slow speed. Delphin’s hull form is based on a scaled version of Autosub6000, and in addition to the main thruster and control surfaces at the rear of the vehicle, Delphin is equipped with four rim driven tunnel thrusters. In order to reduce the development cycle time, Delphin was designed to use commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors and thrusters interfaced to a standard PC motherboard running the control software within the MS Windows environment. To further simplify the development, the autonomy system uses the State-Flow Toolbox within the Matlab/Simulink environment. While the autonomy software is running, image processing routines are used for obstacle avoidance and target tracking, within the commercial Scorpion Vision software. This runs as a parallel thread and passes results to Matlab via the TCP/IP communication protocol. The COTS based development approach has proved effective. However, a powerful PC is required to effectively run Matlab and Simulink, and, due to the nature of the Windows environment, it is impossible to run the control in hard real-time. The autonomy system will be recoded to run under the Matlab Windows Real-Time Windows Target in the near future. Experimental results are used to demonstrating the performance and current capabilities of the vehicle are presented

Density and Survival of Lady Beetles (Coccinellidae) in Overwintering Sites in Manitoba

The densities of lady beetles, Coccinellidae, overwintering as adults (adults per m2) in leaf litter collected in late October for two years in a beach-ridge forest on the south shore of Lake Manitoba were 56.4 for the Thirteen-spotted Lady Beetle, Hippodamia tredecimpunctata (Say), 38.3 for the Seven-spotted Lady Beetle, Coccinella septempunctata (L.), 7.7 for the Transverse Lady Beetle, Coccinella transversoguttata richardsonii Brown, 1.6 for the Convergent Lady Beetle, Hippodamia convergens Guerin, and 0.6 for the Parenthesis Lady Beetle, Hippodamia parenthesis (Say). The mean overwintering survival for these species was 0.254, 0.036, 0.023, 0.0, and 0.0, respectively. The density of overwintering coccinellids was highest near the margins of the forest, particularly on the beach side, where beetles from shore appear to have entered the forest. The mean density over 3 years (2.9 per m2) of all coccinellid species in November in the litter under a remnant grove of riverbank forest in Winnipeg, was lower than in the beach-ridge forest (104.8 per m2), but their survival (0.460) was higher than in the beach-ridge forest (0.154). More species of coccinellids were found in the samples from the riverbank forest than from the beach-ridge forest

[Report of] Specialist Committee V.4: ocean, wind and wave energy utilization

The committee's mandate was :Concern for structural design of ocean energy utilization devices, such as offshore wind turbines, support structures and fixed or floating wave and tidal energy converters. Attention shall be given to the interaction between the load and the structural response and shall include due consideration of the stochastic nature of the waves, current and wind

Rapid prototyping of flexible models - a new methods for model testing?

To date hydroelastic towing tank models are generally segmented, flexible backbone or hinged models which provide an extremely limited representation of the ship structure and record loads only at a finite number of locations between segments. Fully flexible “hydro-structural” models, whilst providing a more accurate structural representation are rarely used due to expense and the complicated nature of their construction. Rapid prototyping is a powerful tool the potential of which is yet to be exploited in the marine industry. By using it to manufacture a realistic ship structure from materials of different properties, new model manufacturing paradigms may be explored. The focus of this paper is the initial findings from an investigation of the use of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies for manufacturing structurally accurate flexible towing tank models. A detailed assessment is carried out of the material properties of 3D printed materials and their ability to model the scaled structural behaviour of a ship. Scaling implications when considering the realistic ship structure are presented and practical considerations for the construction of 3D printed towing tank models are discussed

In vivo transcription of ribosomal RNA in relation to the mitotic cycle in Physarum polycephalum

We have investigated the transcription of ribosomal RNA in plasmodia of Physarum polycephalum by a combination of pulse-labelling with [3H]uridine and RNA; DNA hybridization. The DNA used for the hybridization was a Hindlll restriction fragment (cloned in bacteriophage λ) of Physarum ribosomal DNA that carries a substantial fraction of the rRNA genes, enabling the ribosomal transcripts in the newly synthesized RNA to be measured. We found that ribosomal RNA constituted about 40 % of the pulse-labelled RNA at all times during the synchronous mitotic cycle.peer-reviewe

Geographically touring the eastern bloc: British geography, travel cultures and the Cold War

This paper considers the role of travel in the generation of geographical knowledge of the eastern bloc by British geographers. Based on oral history and surveys of published work, the paper examines the roles of three kinds of travel experience: individual private travels, tours via state tourist agencies, and tours by academic delegations. Examples are drawn from across the eastern bloc, including the USSR, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Albania. The relationship between travel and publication is addressed, notably within textbooks, and in the Geographical Magazine. The study argues for the extension of accounts of cultures of geographical travel, and seeks to supplement the existing historiography of Cold War geography

On the Strong Scalability of Maritime CFD

Since 2004, supercomputer growth hasbeen constrained by energy efficiency rather than raw hardware speeds. Tomaintain exponential growth of overall computing power, a massive growth inparallelization is under way. To keep up with these changes, computationalfluid dynamics (CFD) must improve its strong scalability – its ability tohandle lower cells-per-core ratios and achieve finer-grain parallelization. Amaritime-focused, unstructured, finite-volume code (ReFRESCO) is used toinvestigate the scalability problems for incompressible, viscous CFD using two classicaltest-cases. Existing research suggests that the linear equation-system solveris the main bottleneck to incompressible codes, due to the stiff Poisson pressure equation. Here, these results are expandedby analysing the reasons for this poor scalability. In particular, a number ofalternative linear solvers and preconditioners are tested to determine if thescalability problem can be circumvented, including GMRES, Pipelined-GMRES,Flexible-GMRES and BCGS. Conventional block-wise preconditioners are tested,along with multi-grid preconditioners and smoothers in various configurations.Memory-bandwidth constraints and global communication patterns are found to bethe main bottleneck, and no state-of-the-art solution techniques which solve thestrong-scalability problem satisfactorily could be found. There is significantincentive for more research and development in this area