Figures
The sand-swimming sandfish lizard, in experiment and simulation.
The sandfish lizard uses body undulation to swim within sand (x-ray image, left), a granular medium in which frictional forces dominate the dynamics. Numerical simulation (right) consisting of a multibody simulation of the animal coupled to a multiparticle model of the granular medium (several hundred thousand 3 mm–diameter glass spheres) allows investigation of the mechanics of swimming, including resistance forces and power consumption. In the right panel, a localized region of grains around the simulated sandfish is fluidized (brighter color indicates faster motion), while the grains only a body width away remain in a solid state. See Ding et al.
Image Credit: Yang Ding, Sarah S. Sharpe, and Andrew Masse, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Citation: (2012) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 8(12) December 2012. PLoS Comput Biol 8(12): ev08.i12. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v08.i12
Published: December 27, 2012
Copyright: © 2012 Ding et al. . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The sandfish lizard uses body undulation to swim within sand (x-ray image, left), a granular medium in which frictional forces dominate the dynamics. Numerical simulation (right) consisting of a multibody simulation of the animal coupled to a multiparticle model of the granular medium (several hundred thousand 3 mm–diameter glass spheres) allows investigation of the mechanics of swimming, including resistance forces and power consumption. In the right panel, a localized region of grains around the simulated sandfish is fluidized (brighter color indicates faster motion), while the grains only a body width away remain in a solid state. See Ding et al.
Image Credit: Yang Ding, Sarah S. Sharpe, and Andrew Masse, Georgia Institute of Technology.