Robert Guy
University of California-Davis, CA·Mathematics & Statistics
Shrimp, krill and even single-celled organisms swim the same way. They beat a row of paddle-like limbs in a wave that starts at the back of the body and moves forward, a stroke called metachronal rowing.
- Fields
Mathematics & Statistics
Engineering
Biophysics
- Topics
metachronal rowing
metachronal swimming
fluid mechanics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Measure flow patterns and forces on dynamically similar remotely operated vehicles to test how metachronal rowing, a back-to-front wave of paddle strokes, generates thrust and lift across paddle Reynolds numbers from 0.01 to 10,000.
- Simulate fluid-structure interaction in untethered metachronal swimmers to calculate the cost of transport, the energy spent per distance traveled, as Reynolds number, paddle geometry and stroke kinematics change.
- Test whether differences in paddle design and stroke motion among natural metachronal swimmers, from single cells to krill and shrimp, make locomotion efficient in each species' own flow regime, combining vehicle experiments with computer models.
More about the research
The strategy works for swimmers that differ hugely in size. That is surprising, because water behaves very differently at those scales: for a cell it feels thick and syrupy, dominated by viscosity, while for a krill it behaves more like the water around a person, dominated by inertia. Explaining why one stroke works across this whole range could also guide the design of underwater vehicles that must run efficiently at many sizes and speeds.
Why it matters
The results could guide design of bio-inspired autonomous underwater vehicles that propel themselves efficiently over a broad range of sizes and speeds, borrowing the paddling strategy used by shrimp, krill and smaller swimmers. The work also adds basic understanding of how a single swimming technique stays effective as flow physics shifts from viscous to inertia-dominated.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
University of California-Davis: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 647 research doctorates a year.
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