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Updated: Jun 24, 2026

A Robotic Platform to Study the Foreflipper of the California Sea Lion
Published on: January 10, 2017
Abstract:
The inverse hydrodynamic task of the synthesis of a wave driver for aquatic organisms, in particular of fishes, has been solved. A multilink model of bending oscillations and the optimum phasings of transverse-rotary vibrations of parts was considered, which provides a maximum driving force of each link for two cases of the hydrodynamic interaction of the parts with water: the force of viscous resistance for a longitudinal and a transverse component of the vector of movement of a segment is proportional to (1) the speed of movement (linear friction) and (2) the square of speed (square-law friction). It was shown that the optimum phasings of link vibrations for transverse and rotary modes are strictly orthogonal for the variant of linear friction or are close to orthogonal in the case of square-law friction. The theoretical forms of the bending waves satisfying the dynamic optimization are compared to experimental data obtained earlier on the basis of filmregistration.

