Fundamental Fluid Dynamics and the Olympic Swimming Movement

The world of competitive swimming is dynamic. Swimmers today are bigger, stronger and faster than they ever have been. The training regimen of an elite athlete includes not only endless practice of his or her skills, but also a carefully planned diet, strength and endurance training, and hours of mental preparation. Within this framework, we have teamed with USA Swimming to develop advanced, fluid dynamics based training and analysis tools for current and future Olympic swimmers. The focus of this presentation will be on the objectives, methodologies and outcomes of measurements of flow around swimmers. Movies of PIV flow measurements and time resolved force measurements around swimmers, including Beth Botsford and Megan Jendrick, 1996 and 2000 Gold Medalists in the 100 meter back and 100 meter breast, respectively, will be presented. Work with Ariana Kukors, 2012 Olympian, 2009 World Championships gold medalist and world record holder in the 200 IM.  In addition, the measurement technique has recently been applied to dolphins.  Data from those experiments will be shown as well.

Speaker: Timothy Wei, Univ. of Nebraska - Lincoln

Room 300