Exploring the swimming performance and the physical mechanisms of Tomopteris locomotion

作     者：Battista, Nicholas A. 

作者机构：Coll New Jersey Dept Math & Stat 2000 Pennington Rd Ewing Township NJ 08628 USA 

出 版 物：《BIOINSPIRATION & BIOMIMETICS》 (Bioinspir. Biomimetics)

年 卷 期：2025年第20卷第2期

页      面：026011-026011页

核心收录：

学科分类：08[工学] 09[农学] 0805[工学-材料科学与工程（可授工学、理学学位）] 0901[农学-作物学] 0836[工学-生物工程] 0811[工学-控制科学与工程] 090102[农学-作物遗传育种] 

基　　金：Division of Mathematical Scienceshttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000121 NSF OAC TCNJ Support of Scholarly Activity Grant TCNJ Sabbatical Program NSF DMS 

主　　题：Tomopteris polychaete swimming fluid-structure interaction generalized polynomial chaos expansions suction thrust performance trade-offs global sensitivity analysis 

摘      要：Tomopterids are mesmerizing holopelagic swimmers. They use two modes of locomotion simultaneously: drag-based metachronal paddling and bodily undulation. Tomopteris has two rows of flexible, leg-like parapodia positioned on opposite sides of its body. Each row metachronally paddles out of phase to the other. Both paddling behaviors occur in concert with a lateral bodily undulation. However, when looked at independently, each mode appears in tension with the other. The direction of the undulatory wave is opposite of what one may expect for forward (FWD) swimming and appears to actively work act against the direction of swimming initiated by metachronal paddling. To investigate how these two modes of locomotion synergize to generate effective swimming, we created a self-propelled, fluid-structure interaction model of an idealized Tomopteris. We holistically explored swimming performance over a 3D mechanospace comprising parapodia length, paddling amplitude, and undulatory amplitude using a machine learning framework based on polynomial chaos expansions. Although undulatory amplitude minimally affected FWD swimming speeds, it helped mitigate the larger costs of transport that arise from either using more mechanically expensive (larger) paddling amplitudes and/or having longer parapodia.